Ross numbly asked after a long pause, “How? Nothing—painful?” It was hard to think of Helena dangling grotesquely at a rope’s end or jolting as she sat strapped in a large, ugly chair. But there were things he had heard of which were horribly worse. Bernie had been watching him. “I’m sorry,” the little man said soberly. “It’s up to the judge. She’s a foreigner, so they may consider that an extenuating circumstance and place some quick-acting poison aboard for her to take. Otherwise it’s slow starvation.” A faint, irrational hope had begun to dawn in Ross’s mind. “Aboard what? Exactly how does it work?” “They’ll put her aboard some hulk with the rockets disabled, fire it off into space—and that’s that. I suppose they’ll use the ship she came in——” Ross was frantically searching his pockets. He had a stylus. “Got any paper?” he briskly demanded of Bernie. “Yes, but——?” The waiter blankly passed over an order book. Ross sprawled on the floor and began to scribble: “Never mind how or why this works. Do it. You saw me work the big fan-shaped computer in the center room and you can do it too. Find the master star maps in the chart room. Look up the co-ordinates of Halsey’s System. Set these co-ordinates on the twenty-seven dials marked Proximate Mass. Take the readings on the windows above the dials and set them on the cursors of the computer——” He scribbled furiously, from time to time forcing himself deliberately to slow down as the writing became an unreadable scrawl. He filled the ruled fronts of the order pages and then the backs—perhaps ten thousand closely-written words, and not one of them wasted. Haarland’s precise instructions, mercilessly drilled into him, flowed out again. He flung the stylus down at last and read through the book again, ignoring the gaping Bernie. It was all there, as far as he could tell. Grant her a lot of luck and more brains than he privately credited her with, and she had a fighting chance of winding up within radar range of Halsey’s Planet. GCA could take her down from there; an annoying ship-like object hanging on the radarscopes would provoke a reconnaissance. She knew absolutely nothing about F-T-L or the Wesley drive, but then—neither did he. That fact itself was no handicap. He might rot on “Minerva,” but some word might get back to Haarland. And so would the ship. And Helena would not perish miserably in a drifting hulk. Bernie saw the mysterious job was ended and dared to ask, “A letter?” “No,” Ross said jubilantly. “By God, if things break right they won’t get her. It’s like this——” He happily began to explain that his F-T-L ship’s rockets were only auxiliaries for fine maneuvering, but he counted on the court not knowing that. If he and Helena could persuade....