lly, but the damage had
been done and you think twice before you kill a person in close quarters
when you aren't absolutely sure you'll be able to dispose of the body.
How did I know I'd be able to open the door? I remember philosophizing
that Pop ought at least to have broke an arm so he'd be as badly off as
Alice and me (though for that matter my right arm was fully recovered
now) but he was all in one piece. There's no justice in events, that's
for sure.

The plane ploughed along silently through the orange soup, though there
was really no way to tell it was moving now--until a skewy spindle shape
loomed up ahead and shot back over the viewport. I think it was a
vulture. I don't know how vultures manage to operate in the haze, which
ought to cancel their keen eyesight, but they do. It shot past _fast_.

Alice lifted her face out of the sponge stuff and began to study the
buttons again. I heaved myself up and around a little and said, "Pop,
Alice and me are going to try to work out how this plane navigates. This
time we don't want no interference." I didn't say a word more about what
he'd done. It never does to hash over stupidities.

"That's perfectly fine, go right ahead," he told me. "I feel calm as a
kitten now we're going somewheres. That's all that ever matters with
me." He chuckled a bit and added, "You got to admit I gave you and Alice
something to work with," but then he had the sense to shut up tight.

* * * * *

We weren't so chary of pushing buttons this time, but ten minutes or so
convinced us that you couldn't push any of the buttons any more, they
_were_ all locked down--all locked except for maybe one, which we didn't
try at first for a special reason.

We looked for other controls--sticks, levers, pedals, finger-holes and
the like. There weren't any. Alice went back and tried the buttons on
Pop's minor console. They were locked too. Pop looked interested but
didn't say a word.

We realized in a general way what had happened, of course. Pushing the
Atla-Hi button had set us on some kind of irreversible automatic. I
couldn't imagine the why of gimmicking a plane's controls like that,
unless maybe to keep loose children or prisoners from being able to mess
things up while the pilot took a snooze, but there were a lot of whys to
this plane that didn't seem to have any standard answers.

The business of taking off on irreversible automatic had happened so
neatly that