Jo said almost shyly.
Laughing, Cardew unhooked the container from his belt and tossed it over. Then, with a final farewell, he and the girl passed inside the vessel and screwed up the airlock.
Once their stifling suits were removed, Cardew fired the rocket tubes. With a grinding roar, the ship tore furiously against the gravity; the terrific drag of Jupiter made itself evident instantly, a drag mounting with every second that the ship boomed and exploded upward from that titanic world.
In eight minutes both Claire and Cardew were unconscious, robot machinery alone firing the tubes. Then, little by little, as the distance increased and the gravity correspondingly lessened, they came out of insensibility, to find Jupiter a vast, banded disk behind them. Ahead was the void with the single green star of Earth plainly visible in the firmament.
“We made it!” Cardew breathed thankfully. “We actually made it!”
“Thanks to Jo,” the girl put in quietly. “I shall never see smelling salts again but what I’ll think of him.”
Cardew did not answer, but he was smiling.
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