Trehearne shook his head to clear it. He ran beside Joris, stumbling up the metal stair to the apron. He was the last one through the port. Joris hauled down a lever and the port closed and locked itself automatically with a squeal of compressed air. Instantly the lights went on. The great generators jarred to life. Joris strode heavily down the long corridor to the bridge with Trehearne at his heels. There was another man sitting there but Joris took over the pilot chair. Trehearne waited tensely but Joris did not touch the controls. He merely sat there, inspecting his bruised fists. "What the hell are you waiting for?" Trehearne cried. "We've only got a few moments at most!" Joris looked at him stolidly. "We've only got one life too. We can throw it away by starting at the wrong moment and colliding with incoming ships. I know the dispatch-schedules. Wait." Trehearne waited. He could not hear inside the ship but he knew that by now alarms must be shrilling all over the spaceport. It was mad to wait. It was craven surrender. Better to run any risk of suicidal collision than to wait.... And still Joris waited, an eye cocked on the chronometers, until through the window Trehearne saw lights flashing up outside and men running. And then he glimpsed the loom of a great ship slanting down out of the sky, over and past them. Joris grunted, suddenly punched the controls. "Hang on!" The _Mirzim_ went up in a screaming arc that crumpled Trehearne to the deck. He clung to a stanchion and prayed that Joris had not lost his skill. He had not. Even the Vardda flesh had limits. So did metal and the bones of ships. Joris knew to the fraction exactly how much they could stand. The course had already been calculated. He cleared the system, found his coordinates, then hammered the signal relays to the generator rooms. The whine of the generators rose and the needle on the acceleration master dial rose with it. Trehearne watched with bulging eyes, gasping under the pressure, barely restraining an impulse to scream. The second officer was clutching his chair, his face white. Joris watched the dial. At the precise instant he punched the relay bars again. The needle ceased to blur in its frantic ascent, climbing now with a decent deliberation. Joris turned around. He looked at his companions and shook with laughter. He had, for the first time since Trehearne had known him, the face of a completely happy man. Trehearne staggered up. He got out a handkerchief and wiped his face. There was blood on it as well as sweat. "Well," he said, "we're off. But if you don't mind telling me now, Joris--where the devil are we off to?" "H'm," said Joris. "This may seem a little peculiar to you in view of all the circumstances--" He roared again with hearty mirth. "I'll tell you, Trehearne. We're off to Thuvis." SEVENTEEN