Yet she did have the rare knack of making any place where she might be, home. She could make a mansion or a hovel--or this spaceship--seem such a perfect home to her men that they were perfectly happy and contented with their living quarters. It was not a matter of furnishings or their arrangement--not just material things like pictures, books, pillows or other knickknacks placed just so. Rather it was the "spirit of home" with which she impregnated every place in which her family might be living at the moment. The boys had not yet noticed this consciously--they were so filled with the joy of living and doing and learning that they had not yet stopped to think about such matters. But Tad Carver recognized it, and loved his wife all the more because of her ability. He often remarked of her, "put her in even a hotel room for ten minutes, and she'll make it home for me." He sometimes felt moments of guilt that he made her chase around so much, instead of letting her stay in one place--and remaining with her there. But he could not stay put--and he knew she would not want to remain any place without him. That was why he had arranged things so she and the boys could travel with him. And, until he had been hurt and she, with the boys, had had to take over his duties, she had seldom left the ship while on other planets, although she always looked out through port or visiplate in the various places where they had gone, with the keen interest in anything new that made her such a delightful traveling companion. So now all four felt that eagerness to be done with this matter of last-minute re-checkings, so they could be on their way back to Terra. It made the time pass swiftly--yet made it so draggingly prolonged, it seemed they would never reach their destination. The ship soon reached an acceleration of two Earth gravities, and Jon asked, "Is this fast enough, Pop, or can you stand more?" "You might step it up to three G's for an hour. There's no use loafing around here longer than necessary to make the curve so we can come fairly near each planet on the line between it and Terra." "And that'll get us up to cruising speed quicker when we do start the straight stretch for home," Jon said, and turned back to his controls to apply another notch of speed. It was not long before they approached Planet One--"Tad." Jon had plotted a course that would take them to within about thirty thousand miles of the little, hot planet, on the Earthward side. As they flashed past it, their receiver clearly picked up the broadcast of their signal-unit. "That one's all right," their father said in a pleased voice, and Jon looked up and back from his calculations on the orbit to circle them about the sun, to grin his pleasure at the approval. "Jak put it on top of a peak in the intermediate zone," he explained. "The weather--if you can call it weather--there is more nearly normal than either on the sunward or the spaceward side."