“It begins to look,” said Link, “as if I may have made myself unpopular on Trent. Is there anything else I ought to know?”

“They started to use tear gas on you,” the whiskery man told him, “so you set fire to a police truck. To let the flames lift up the gas, you said. That would be some more years in jail. But I got you in the Glamorgan—”

“And got the grid to lift us off?” When the little man shook his head, Link asked hopefully. “I got the grid to lift us off? We persuaded—”

“Nope,” said Thistlethwaite. “You just took off. On emergency rockets. Off the spaceport tarmac. With no clearance. Leavin’ the oiled tarmac on fire.” Link winced. The little man went on inexorably, “We hit for space at six gees acceleration and near as I can make out you kept goin’ at that till the first rockets burned out. And then you went down into the mess room.”

“I suppose,” said Link unhappily, “that I’d worked up an appetite. Or was there some way I could pile up a few more years to spend in jail?”

“You went to sleep,” said the little man. “And I wasn’t goin’ to bother you!”

Link thought it over.

“No,” he agreed. “I can see that you mightn’t have wanted to bother me. Do you intend to turn around and go back to Trent?”

“What for?” demanded the little man bitterly. “For jail? An’ for them to sell off the Glamorgan for port dues and such?”

“There’s that, of course,” acknowledged Link. “But I’d rather believe you wouldn’t leave a friend in distress, or jail. All right. I don’t want to go back to Trent either. I’m an outdoorsy sort of character and I wouldn’t like to spend the next eighteen years in jail.”

“Twenty-two,” said Thistlethwaite. “And six months.”

“So,” finished Link, “I’ll play along. Since I’m the astrogator I’ll try to find out where we are. Then you’ll tell me where you want to go. And after that, some evening when there’s nothing special to do, you’ll tell me why. Right?”