"And when you get us there, will you tell us what the contraption did to get us in this place, and make us all--even you--look all different? We thought it was one of those scary dreams until you got us out in front of everybody ... and I still ain't so sure...." Doug still hurt, but the dizziness was going, and there was Terry's question to answer. It was a good question. "Earth, that's where we're going! Ever hear of it?" "This is a _real_ space-ship, Dad?" Doug smiled down at him. "It's pretty real," he said. They watched him in silence as he began his search. He wasted twenty minutes at it before he was forced to the conclusion that there were no astronomical charts, no star maps. The Science Council would have its own, and the robot didn't need any.... He was glad the boys were with him. Glad, because without them, the cold panic that welled inside might have taken hold. Glad, because with them, he could muster the will it took to keep from telling himself how terribly big and empty infinity was. Maybe you should've stuck with the MIT degree after all, Carl Grayson had said. And, he had stuck himself with it! But, if the things he had learned to get it had gotten him into this, then they would damn well have to get him out! Doug ripped the blank plastisheets from Tayne's unused notebook, tossed them to the flat surface of the console. There was an ink-stylus in another pocket of the dead man's tunic. He pointed to a bulkhead chronometer. "Tell me when an hour's up, boys," he said. He must have his answers within the hour, for in computing them he would need a constant to represent known navigation error, and the hour would represent it, once he determined its value. And if he should exceed that time, its value would be changed--and the constant, the calculations, worthless. With the viewscreen, he began his search of space for the bright, blue-white planet that would be Earth. When he found it, he would use twenty minutes of the hour to establish the plane of its ecliptic. Then, if he could remember what the books had said, remember its orbital speed, its orbital arc for the month of August and its resultant distance from the sun. And then of course the same mathematical equivalents for Venus, and subsequent establishment of the necessary relationships. And then interjected in it must be his own speed and relative direction for the space of one hour. And when he had his dead-reckoning solution, it would still be like shooting ducks--with Earth the biggest duck that a man ever had to bag. And with a sling-shot--his stylus--not the finely-machined shotgun that would be the slide-rule and calculator which he didn't have. He kept turning the screen. In six precious minutes he found it, like a bright new jewel pinned to the white silk scarf of the Milky Way. Earth. He reached for the ink-stylus, the blank plastisheets.... * * * * *