Jak soon came running in and the two boys held a quick council, almost ignoring their mother in the excitement of trying to figure a safe way of bringing some of the fuel-stuff aboard and trying it out. But at last she made herself heard. "I think you should wait and let Mr. C. decide about this," she said with determination. "How is he--awake?" "About the same--still unconscious." "Then don't you see, Mom, that there's no telling when he'll wake up, and we don't want to wait that long?" "I still say you mustn't take the chance of blowing us all to Kingdom Come before you can have his advice and help in deciding what to do with that new, untried and dangerous metal," she declared so firmly that they could not ignore her. "Now you listen to your mother. This is once when I'm setting my foot down. I will _not_ let you do it!" Nor could their pleas move her. "All right, Mother," Jak finally conceded defeat with--if the truth must be told--an inner sense of relief. He, too, had been more than a little afraid of that untried stuff. But Jon had seemed so sure, while he knew very little about it. "We'll leave it here while we go set our markers on the other planets." "Unless Pop wakes up before we're finished here," Jon added sullenly, somewhat humiliated because he felt his mother was treating him like a little boy instead of the man and scientist he now considered himself to be. "When he does, though, you'll see he'll say we should have tried it." His mother, understanding well how he felt, but still worried over the possibilities for danger her anxious mind insisted on painting, patted his shoulder. "In that case, Son," she said softly, "I'll apologize." "We'd better go out and shut that trap door and mark the place some way before we leave." Jak tried to lighten the tension. "I'll take measurements of where we are, and that'll do just as well." Jon's voice still held that injured tone. Mrs. Carver kept her voice level, but her eyes caught and held those of her younger son. "I'm sorry if I seem too stubborn about this, Jon; but I just don't like the idea of you boys trying to handle, alone, something you don't know anything about, especially since you yourselves admit that it's highly dangerous." Jon's petulance slowly disappeared, and finally he grinned and kissed her. "You're right, as always, Mom. I'm getting too big for my coveralls. I'll calculate courses to One, and to and around the sun, and we'll let this ride until Pop wakes up." While Jak and Mrs. Carver busied themselves at other tasks, Jon sweated over the complicated math of the new courses. He knew how important this was, especially the plan he had in mind for placing the marker in its orbit about the sun. He knew their very lives depended on the correctness of his calculations. So he did them slowly, carefully, and checked them closely to make sure he had done them right and made no mistakes.