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Now, with no directing signals to orientate it, the shallow dish had automatically set itself in the neutral position. It was aimed forward along the axis of the ship — and, therefore, pointing very close to the brilliant beacon of Saturn, still months away. Poole wondered how many more problems would have arisen by the time Discovery reached her still far-distant goal. If he looked carefully, he could just see that Saturn was not a perfect disk; on either side was something that no unaided human eye had ever seen before — the slight oblateness caused by the presence of the rings. How wonderful it would be, he told himself, when that incredible system of orbiting dust and ice filled their sky, and Discovery had become an eternal moon of Saturn! But that achievement would be in vain, unless they could reestablish communication with Earth.

Once again he parked Betty some twenty feet from the base of the antenna support, and switched control over to Hal before opening up.

“Going outside now,” he reported to Bowman. “Everything under control.”

“I hope you’re right. I’m anxious to see that unit.”

“You’ll have it on the test bench in twenty minutes, I promise you.”

There was silence for some time as Poole completed his leisurely drift toward the antenna. Then Bowman, standing by on the control deck, heard various puffings and gruntings.

“May have to go back on that promise; one of these locknuts has stuck. I must have tightened it too much — whoops — here it comes!”

There was another long silence; then Poole called out:

“Hal, swing the pod light round twenty degrees left — thanks — that’s O.K.”

The very faintest of warning bells sounded somewhere far down in the depths of Bowman’s consciousness. There was something strange — not really alarming, just unusual. He worried over it for a few seconds before he pinpointed the cause.

Hal had executed the order, but he had not acknowledged it, as he invariably did. When Poole had finished, they’d have to look into this…

Out on the antenna mounting, Poole was too busy to notice anything unusual. He had gripped the wafer of circuitry with his gloved hands, and was worrying it out of its slot.

It came loose, and he held it up in the pale sunlight.

“Here’s the little bastard,” he said to the universe in general and Bowman in particular. “It still looks perfectly O.K. to me.”

Then he stopped. A sudden movement had caught his eye — out here, where no movement was possible.

He looked up in alarm. The pattern of illumination from the space pod’s twin spotlights, which he had been using to fill in the shadows cast by the sun, had started to shift around him.

Perhaps Betty had come adrift; he might have been careless in anchoring her. Then, with an astonishment so great that it left no room for fear, he saw that the space pod was coming directly toward him, under full thrust.

The sight was so incredible that it froze his normal pattern of reflexes; he made no attempt to avoid the onrushing monster. At the last moment, he recovered his voice and shouted: “Hal! Full braking — —” It was too late.

At the moment of impact, Betty was still moving quite slowly; she had not been built for high accelerations. But even at a mere ten miles an hour, half a ton of mass can be very lethal, on Earth or in space…

Inside Discovery, that truncated shout over the radio made Bowman start so violently that only the restraining straps held him in his seat.

“What’s happened, Frank?” be called.

There was no answer.

He called again. Again no reply.

Then, outside the wide observation windows, something moved into his field of view. He saw, with an astonishment as great as Poole’s had been, that it was the space pod — under full power, heading out toward the stars.

“Hal!” he cried. “What’s wrong? Full braking thrust on Betty! Full braking thrust!”

Nothing happened. Betty continued to accelerate on her runaway course.

Then, towed behind her at the end of the safety line, appeared a spacesuit.