He exerted all his powers of concentration. What would they have done—Thomas and Wilmer—right now, at this very second? Because whatever they had done, he would have to do something altogether different. Otherwise he wouldn’t come back alive.

Again he braked, again the needle shook, again his speed dropped—from 30, down to 22, to 13, to 5 kilometers per second—until the needle fluttered gently above zero. Technically speaking, he was already stopped; in space, speed is constant, always relative to something else; there’s no such thing as absolute zero, as on Earth.

The light began to shrink, retreating farther and farther… becoming dimmer and dimmer; then it reversed the process, gradually gaining in size and color, until it came to a stop again, 2 kilometers off his bow.

What would Thomas and Wilmer not have done? he wondered. What was the one thing they definitely would have avoided doing? Would they have made a run for it? Never! Not from a measly little speck, from such a dippy little dot!

He had no desire to turn the ship around—too easy to lose track of the thing—nothing harder than to patrol when something is astern—no fun twisting your head around like a corkscrew to monitor the video screen… No, turning around was definitely out—better to keep it in full view at all times. So he started moving in reverse, using his braking rockets to accelerate—one of the many basic navigational skills a pilot was expected to have mastered. His gravimeter showed 1g… then -1.6… -2… The ship was harder to handle in reverse; the nose kept listing to one side… Retro-rockets were meant for braking, not accelerating.

The little light seemed to hesitate. It hung back for a while, gradually diminishing, momentarily eclipsed Alpha Eridani, then slid away, gamboled among a few nameless stars, and—took off after him!

It wasn’t about to be given the brush-off.