"Now, you sheet-iron bucket of nuts and bolts, _jump_!" and Garlock snapped the red switch. Earth lay beneath them. So did Port Gunther. "Hu-u-u-uh!" Garlock's huge sigh held much more of relief than of triumph. "They did it! We're home!" Lola shrieked; and, breaking into unashamed and unrestrained tears, went into her husband's extended arms. "Cry ahead, sweet. I'd bawl myself if Garlock wasn't looking. Maybe I will, anyway," James said. Then, extending his right arm to Garlock and to Belle, "I was scared to death you couldn't make it except by back tracking. Good going, you two Primes," but his thoughts said vastly more than his words. Belle's eyes, too, were wet; Garlock's own were not quite dry. "You weren't as sure as you looked, then, that we could do it the hard way," Belle said. "All inside, I was one quivering mass of jelly." "Afterward, you mean. You were solid as Gibraltar when I fired the charge. You're the kind of woman a man wants with him when the going's tough. Slide around here a little, so I can get hold of you." Garlock released Belle--finally--and turned to the pilot, who was just pulling a data-sheet from Compy the Computer. "How far did we miss target, Jim?" * * * James held up his right hand, thumb and forefinger forming a circle. "You're one point eight seven inches high, and off center point five three inches to the north northeast by east. I hereby award each of you the bronze medal of Marksman First. Shall I take her down now or do you want to check in from here first?" "Neither ... I think. What do you think, Belle?" "Right. Not until you-know-what." "Check. Until we decide whether or not to let them know just yet that we can handle the ship. If we do, how many of our taped reports we turn in and how many we toss down the chute." "I get it!" James exclaimed, with a spreading grin. "_That_, my dear people, is something I never expected to live long enough to see--our straight-laced Doctor Garlock applying the Bugger Factor to a research problem!" "I prefer the term 'Monk's Coefficient,' myself," Garlock said, "from the standpoint of mathematical rigor." "At Polytech we called it 'Finagle's Formula'," Belle commented. "The most widely applicable operator known." "Have you three lost your minds?" Lola demanded. "That's nothing to joke about--you wouldn't destroy official reports! All that astronomy and anthropology that nobody ever even dreamed of before? You _couldn't_! Not _possibly_!" "Each of us knows just as well as you do how much data we have, exactly how new and startling it is; but we've thought ahead farther than you have. None of us likes the idea of destroying it a bit better than you do. We won't, either, without your full, unreserved, wholehearted consent, nor without your fixed, iron-clad, unshakable determination never to reveal any least bit of it."