Stone coughed. “You’re not supposed to be here to start a bull session, you know. You’re supposed to be here to learn how to fly this thing in case Mickey and I both wake up dead one morning.”

“Sir, the only controls that are a whole lot different from ones I’ve used before are the ones for the reactor-and if I have to mess with those, we’re all in a lot of trouble,” Johnson said. The motor sat at the end of a long boom to minimize the risk for the rest of the Lewis and Clark if anything went wrong with it.

“One of the reasons you’re learning is that we’re all liable to be in a lot of trouble,” Stone pointed out. “Face it: you came aboard because you were curious about us, right?” Johnson could hardly argue with that; it was the Gospel truth. Stone waited to see if he’d say something anyhow, then nodded when he didn’t. “Uh-huh. Okay, you aren’t the only one. What if the Lizards send a present after us? What are we going to do about it?”

“Or the Germans,” Johnson said.

Stone shook his head now. “They can’t catch us, not any more. This may not sound like a hot ship-.01g? Wow!” He had a gift for the sardonic. “We tack on a whole four inches to our velocity every second. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? It adds up, though. At the end of a day, we’re going five miles a second faster than we were when that day started. Regular rockets kick a lot harder to start with, but once they’re done kicking, it’s free fall the rest of the way. The Nazis don’t have any constant-boost ships, though I’ll bet you dollars to doughnuts they’re working on them now. The Lizards, damn them, do.”

“All right,” Glen Johnson said agreeably. “Suppose they come after us at, say,1g? That’s ten times our acceleration. We can run, we can’t hide, and we can’t even dodge-the Lewis and Clark is about as maneuverable as an elephant on roller skates. So what do we do then? Besides go down in flames, I mean?”