rounded by a vivid
orange circle, appeared upon the screen, low down and to the left of
center, and the timing galvanometer showed a wide positive deflection.

"Hashed again!" growled Breckenridge. "I must be losing my grip,
I guess. I put everything I had on that sight, and missed it ten
divisions. I think I'll turn in my badge--I've cocked our perfect curve
already, before we got to the first check-station!" His hands moved
toward the controls, to correct their course and acceleration.

"As you were--hold everything! Lay off those controls!" snapped the
computer. "There's something screwy, just as I thought--and it isn't
you, either. I'm no pilot, of course, but I do know good compensation
when I see it, and if you weren't compensating that point I never saw it
done. Besides, with your skill and my figures I know darn well that we
aren't off more than a tenth of one division. He's cuckoo! Don't call
him--let him start it, and refer him to me."

"All x--I'll be only too glad to pass the buck. But I still think,
Steve, that you're playing with dynamite. Who ever heard of an
astronomer being wrong?"

"You'd be surprised," grinned the physicist, "Since this fuss has
just started, nobody has tried to find out whether they were wrong
or not...."

"IPV _Arcturus_, attention!" came from the speaker curtly.

"IPV _Arcturus_, Breckenridge," from the chief pilot.

"You have been on my ray almost a minute. Why are you not correcting
course and acceleration?"

"Doctor Stevens is computing us and has full control of course and
acceleration," replied Breckenridge. "He will answer you."

"I am changing neither course nor acceleration because you are not
in position," declared Stevens, crisply, "Please give me your present
supposed location, and your latest precision goniometer bearings on the
sun, the moon, Mars, Venus, and your Tellurian reference limb, with
exact time of observations, gyroscope zero-planes, and goniometer
factors!"

"Correct at once or I shall report you to the Observatory," E2 answered
loftily, paying no attention to the demand for proof of position.

"Be sure you do that, guy--and while you're at it report that your
station hasn't taken a precision bearing in a month. Report that you've
been muddling along on radio loop bearings, and that you don't know
where you are, within seven thousand kilometers. And speaking of
reporting--I know already that a lot of you astronomical guessers
have only the fai