As she debated what to do, the answer came in a long, shuddering breath. “Oh,” she said. “He forgot to breathe.” She laughed, but it came out wrong and she cut it off. She wasn’t far from Carl’s condition herself.

Get it under control, she thought.

“Gerry, help him down to his bunk.”

Gerry nodded and pushed Carl back through the hatchway into the mid-deck. When they had gone below, Judy said, “Well, Allen, this is a pretty situation you’ve got yourself in.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I mean hijacking and piracy.”

“What? You’ve got to be—” He stopped. She wasn’t kidding. “All right, I can believe hijacking, but piracy?”

“We’re carrying a full load of privately owned cargo, which you diverted without authority. That makes it piracy. You should have thought of that before you started pushing buttons.”

Allen looked at her without comprehension. “I don’t get it,” he said. “What’s wrong with you people? I demonstrate a working hyperdrive engine and Carl curls up into a ball, and now you start talking about piracy? Where’s your sense of adventure? Don’t you realize what this means? I’ve given us the key to the entire universe! We’re not stuck on one planet anymore! The human race can have some breathing room again. And what’s more, I’ve ended the threat of nuclear extermination forever!”

Judy hadn’t even thought of that angle. She’d been too busy trying to suppress the hysterical giggles that kept threatening to bubble to the surface. Hyperdrive! But now she did think about it, and she didn’t like what she came up with. “Ended the threat of nuclear extermination? You idiot! You’ve probably caused it! Do you have any idea what’s going on at Mission Control right now? Full-scale panic, that’s what. They’ve lost an orbiter—gone, just like that—and it’s not going to take long before somebody decides that the Russians or the French or somebody shot us down with an antisatellite weapon. I think you’re smart enough to figure out what happens then.”