Starre apparently knew he was in love with her, too, for on the fifth day Bob was teaching her the mechanics of operating the hauler, and she gently lifted his hand from a finger-switch.
"Even _I_ know that isn't the control to the Holloway vacuum-feeder, Bob. That switch is for the--ah--the anathern tube, you told me. Right?"
"Right," he said unsteadily. "Anyway, Starre, as I was saying, this ship operates according to the reverse Fitzgerald Contraction Formula. All moving bodies contract in the line of motion. What Holloway and Hammond did was to reverse that universal law. They caused the contraction first--motion had to follow! The gravitonic field affects every atom in the ship with the same speed at the same time. We could go from zero speed to our top speed of two thousand miles a second just like that!"
He snapped his fingers. "No acceleration effects. This type of ship, necessary in our business, can stop flat, back up, ease up, move in any direction, and the passengers wouldn't have any feeling of motion at--Oh, hell!" Bob groaned, the serious glory of her eyes making him shake. He took her hand. "Starre," he said desperately, "I've got to tell you something--"
She jerked her hand away. "No," she exclaimed in an almost frightened voice. "You can't tell me. There's--there's Mac," she finished, faltering. "The asteroid--"
Her eyes filled with tears. "I have to live up to the bargain."
"And ruin your whole life," he ground out. Suddenly, he turned back to the control board, quartered the vision plate. He pointed savagely to the lower left quarter, which gave a rearward view of the dumbbell ship trailing astern.
"There's your ship, Starre." He jabbed his finger at it. "I've got a feeling--and I can't put the thought into concrete words--that somehow the whole solution of the problem of grabbing the asteroid back lies there. But how? _How?_"
Starre's blue eyes followed the long cable back to where it was attached around her ship's narrow midsection.
She shook her head helplessly. "It just looks like a big yo-yo to me."
"Yes, a yo-yo. That's all." She was belligerent.
"A _yo-yo_!" Bob Parker yelled the word and almost hit the ceiling, he got out of the chair so fast. "Can you imagine it! A yo-yo!"
