Jon shook his head helplessly. "Darned if I can figure it out. I always supposed such stuff was only found inside a planetary system. Must be there's some in deep space, though, since we sure as perch got hit by one." He reached in his pocket and pulled out a small marble-sized stone. "Here it is. I hunted around and found it last night. It dented the farther bulkhead, but must have lost so much momentum it couldn't penetrate." "Just one of those billions-to-one chances, eh?" Jak looked up from his examination of the stone. "Yes, there's still so much about space nobody knows yet." Jak thought silently for a moment, then asked, "Well, what do you think we should do next?" "Keep going, natch." Jon's voice was earnest. "We can't be more than a couple of days away from the nearest planets--and we're over six weeks out of Terra. Pop said this system we're heading for has four or five planets, at least, and that probably Two and Three, and maybe Four, would be fairly Earthlike and habitable. So long as we're so close, it would be wrong if we didn't at least take a close-up looksee at them." "Yes," slowly, "Father'd want us to do that." "You know darned well he would. He's sunk almost everything he's got into this ship and this trip, and if we miss now, the government probably wouldn't give us another exclusive crack at it, even if we could scrape up the credits to come out here again." "Didn't Father say something the other day about his spectro-analyzer--you know, 'Annie'--showing there was...?" "Yes, 'Annie' popped up strong on that, and that's another reason we've got to keep going--especially since you think Pop'll snap out of it in a few days. You're sure of that, aren't you?" He peered intently into his brother's eyes. "Yes, as far as I can tell. There's a concussion where his head hit the floor, but I don't think it's too bad, and it should wear off soon." Jon sighed with relief. "If ... if he was dead, or dying, it would be different, and I'd say go home. But there's another thing. Before we left Terra we heard a rumor Slik Bogin was chasing around out in this sector, and we don't want to let him beat us to this system." "Bogin? That's the notorious pirate, isn't it? No, if he's out here, we don't want to let him beat us--though what we could do if he did try, I don't know." "We'll figure that out if he tries to hijack us." "You hope!" There was a long silence while the boys studied their instruments again. Then, "What about landing, Chubby? Can you do it?" "I've been studying up on it--put on the sleep-instructor last night." Jon was suddenly half-frightened with the prospect, but determined to keep his voice level. "I've helped Pop land the crate several times--even handled the controls under his instructions--so I think I can do it, with you reading off the manual to me. Anyway, if--if Pop gets worse, we've got to land some time, so we might as well try it here as any time or anywhere."