“Asteroid pod, this is Carter.” The captain’s recognizable voice piped from a speaker in the center of the pilot’s console. “What’s your status?”
“All correct, skipper,” Ed answered, flipping a toggle on the console. “Oriented toward the structure with an ETA of…” He leaned over to glance at a reading. “…About twelve minutes.”
“Understood,” Carter’s voice replied. “We’re tracking you. Keep in touch.”
The cockpit was divided into two sides, each corresponding to one of the half-dome viewports that afforded a spectacular, slightly amber-tinted view of the space outside. Opposite Ed’s pilot chair on the right was a corresponding chair with a different but no less complex dashboard. The console proper was slender enough to fit mainly between the occupant’s legs, with an impressive assembly of levers and pedals to either side. Settling into this seat, Lamont speculated: “Do these control the manipulator arms, then?”
Ed nodded, his expression inscrutable as ever behind his thick glasses. “Right the first time. Try not to touch anything. If one of the claws were to, say, smash through the viewport, the results would be unpleasant.”
“Could that really happen?” The newspaperman asked.
Ed didn’t answer. Lamont drew his knees back carefully.
Rico, meanwhile, had squeezed his bulky frame into one of the four bucket seats arranged behind the control chairs. He was followed by Rosemary and Clifford, who gazed, mouths open, at the spectacle outside. Craning his neck, Lamont could see that Abigail had returned to her station at the portable sensor box just outside the cockpit entrance. Arthur was nowhere to be seen.
“Where’s the tower, then?” Rosemary asked from her place directly behind Ed.
Spratt pointed a finger at the curved bulkhead between the two viewports, around which, from a certain angle, the dark edges of the moon could be seen. “Dead ahead,” He answered. “We’ll see it sooner than you think. Scale is weird at these speeds.”
He was right.