"Can you see all those asteroids, Nibley. Are you sure?"
"Sure. Lots of 'em. Every single one going every which way! Keep straight ahead until two hours from now, after that last direction of mine—then slide off at an angle toward Jupiter, slow down to ninety thousand for ten minutes, then up to a hundred ten thousand for fifteen minutes. After that, one hundred fifty thousand all the way!"
Flame poured out of the rocket jets. It moved swiftly away, growing small and distant.
"Give me a read on dial 67!"
"Four."
"Make it six! And set your automatic pilot to 61 and 14 and 35. Now—everything's okay. Keep your chronometer reading this way—seven, nine, twelve. There'll be a few tight scrapes, but you'll hit Jupiter square on in 24 hours, if you jump your speed to 700,000 six hours from now and hold it that way."
"Square on it is, Mr. Nibley."
Nibley just lay there a moment. His voice was easy and not so high and shrill any more. "And on the way back to Mars, later, don't try to find me. I'm going out in the dark on this metal rock. Nothing but dark for me. Back to perihelion and sun for you. Know—know where I'm going?"
"Where?"
"Centaurus!" Nibley laughed. "So help me God I am. No lie!"
He watched the ship going out, then, and he felt the compact, collected trajectories of all the men in it. It was a good feeling to know that he was the guiding theme. Like in the old days....
Douglas' voice broke in again.
"Hey, Pop. Pop, you still there?"
A little silence. Nibley felt blood pulsing down inside his suit. "Yep," he said.
"We just gave Bruno your little note to read. Whatever it was, when he finished reading it, he went insane."
Nibley said, quiet-like. "Burn that there paper. Don't let anybody else read it."
A pause. "It's burnt. What was it?"
"Don't be inquisitive," snapped the old man. "Maybe I proved to Bruno that he didn't really exist. To hell with it!"
The rocket reached its constant speed. Douglas radioed back: "All's well. Sweet calculating, Pop. I'll tell the Rocket Officials back at Marsport. They'll be glad to know about you. Sweet, sweet calculating. Thanks. How goes it? I said—how goes it? Hey, Pop! Pop?"
Nibley raised a trembling hand and waved it at nothing. The ship was gone. He couldn't even see the jet-wash now, he could only feel that hard metal movement out there among the stars, going on and on through a course he had set for it. He couldn't speak. There was just emotion in him. He had finally, by God, heard a compliment from a mechanic of radar-computators!
Nibley raised a trembling hand and waved it at nothing.
He waved his hand at nothing. He watched nothing moving on and on into the crossed orbits of other invisible nothings. The silence was now complete.
He put his hand down. Now he had only to chart that one last personal orbit. The one he had wanted to finish only in space and not grounded back on Mars.
It didn't take lightning calculation to set it out for certain.
Life and death were the parabolic ends to his trajectory. The long life, first swinging in from darkness, arcing to the inevitable perihelion, and now moving back out, out and away—
Into the soft, encompassing dark.
"By God," he thought weakly, quietly. "Right up to the last, my reputation's good. Never fluked a calculation yet, and I never will...."
He didn't.
Zero Hour
Oh, it was to be so jolly! What a game! Such excitement they hadn't known in years. The children catapulted this way and that across the green lawns, shouting at each other, holding hands, flying in circles, climbing trees, laughing.... Overhead, the rockets flew and beetle-cars whispered by on the streets, but the children played on. Such fun, such tremulous joy, such tumbling and hearty screaming.
Mink ran into the house, all dirt and sweat. For her seven years she was loud and strong and definite. Her mother, Mrs. Morris, hardly saw her as she yanked out drawers and rattled pans and tools into a large sack.
"Heavens, Mink, what's going on?"
"The most exciting game ever!" gasped Mink, pink-faced.
"Stop and get your breath," said the mother.
"No, I'm all right," gasped Mink. "Okay I take these things, Mom?"
"But don't dent them," said Mrs. Morris.
"Thank you, thank you!" cried Mink and boom! she was gone, like a rocket.
Mrs. Morris surveyed the fleeing tot. "What's the name of the game?"
"Invasion!" said Mink. The door slammed.
In every yard on the street children brought out knives and forks and pokers and old stove pipes and can-openers.
It was an interesting fact that this fury and bustle occurred only among the younger children. The older ones, those ten years and more disdained the affair and marched scornfully off on hikes or played a more dignified version of hide-and-seek on their own.
Meanwhile, parents came and went in chromium beetles. Repair men came to repair the vacuum elevators in houses, to fix fluttering television sets or hammer upon stubborn food-delivery tubes. The adult civilization passed and repassed the busy youngsters, jealous of the fierce energy of the wild tots, tolerantly amused at their flourishings, longing to join in themselves.
"This and this and this," said Mink, instructing the others with their assorted spoons and wrenches. "Do that, and bring that over here. No! Here, ninnie! Right. Now, get back while I fix this—" Tongue in teeth, face wrinkled in thought. "Like that. See?"
"Yayyyy!" shouted the kids.
Twelve-year-old Joseph Connors ran up.
"Go away," said Mink straight at him.
"I wanna play," said Joseph.
"Can't!" said Mink.
"Why not?"
"You'd just make fun of us."
"Honest, I wouldn't."
"No. We know you. Go away or we'll kick you."
Another twelve-year-old boy whirred by on little motor-skates. "Aye, Joe! Come on! Let them sissies play!"
Joseph showed reluctance and a certain wistfulness. "I want to play," he said.
"You're old," said Mink, firmly.
"Not that old," said Joe sensibly.
"You'd only laugh and spoil the Invasion."
The boy on the motor-skates made a rude lip noise. "Come on, Joe! Them and their fairies! Nuts!"
Joseph walked off slowly. He kept looking back, all down the block.
Mink was already busy again. She made a kind of apparatus with her gathered equipment. She had appointed