He re-stowed the torch, then opened a flagon of emergency oxygen-helium mixture in front of the electric blowers that kept their air circulating--to replenish what had been lost. Only then--although it had been less than two minutes, really--did he turn back to the rest of the family. He had been somewhat surprised that his father had not come to help him; he had not been at all surprised that his brother had not. Jak was a grand guy--Jon thought the world of him--but he just wasn't worth a dead salmon in an emergency like this; he did not have a mechanical type of mind. Now, as he turned, Jon saw his mother and brother kneeling beside the prone body of his father, and noted with astonishment that she was crying. There was something stiff and unnatural about the man's body, too, lying there on the deck beside his recline seat. A sudden fear sent the boy leaping across the room. "What ... what happened? Pop isn't dead, is he?" "No. Something made him fall, and he hit his head on the deck and knocked himself out," Jak said without looking up. "His foot caught in the footrest, and as he fell over the seat arm his leg broke." Jon dropped to his knees beside his weeping mother and threw an arm about her. His eyes were wide and damp with swift tears, for, in spite of the rapid growth his body had undergone in the past few years, he was still only sixteen--and he loved this splendid father of his with genuine devotion. It just couldn't be that Pop wouldn't live, he thought in panic. He couldn't make himself believe that he might no longer have the wonderful companionship and guidance and counsel of this grand man who had been his world. His mother, seeming to realize what the boy was undergoing, forced back her own grief to turn and gather this younger son into her arms, comforting him as only mothers can. They watched the elder brother's swift, competent hands as he bathed with soft cotton, soaked in some kind of medicine taken from the open first-aid kit beside him, the bruised place on the back of the father's head. Jak had already shaved away the hair about this bruise. Now he took an atomizer and sprayed on a clear, plastic bandage. Mrs. Carver turned anxiously to her younger son. "Jon, you know how to run the ship. Turn it around and get us back to the nearest hospital as fast as it will go." Jon looked at her in astonishment, for it had never before occurred to him that she did not know at least something about inter-stellar astrogation. "We can't, Mom. You don't run a ship in space like you do a ground car. We're on negative acceleration now, but it'll be close to two days before we've slowed enough for any kind of maneuvering." "That's right, Mother," Jak came unexpectedly to his brother's aid. "You can't stop or turn a spaceship at will. But I don't think we need worry too much. Father's head wound is not serious, although there's a slight concussion. And we can set his leg so it will heal straight--it's a clean break."