reen. Why I don't know. It reminded me of
the old "X Marks the Spot" of newspaper murders, but that would be
getting very fancy. Anyway the spot we'd just taken off from was so
marked and in that case the button with the green nimbus ...

"Hold tight, everybody," I said to Alice, grudgingly including Pop in my
warning. "I got to try it."

I gripped my seat with my knees and one arm and pushed the green
button. It pushed.

The plane swung around in a level loop, not too tight to disturb the
stomach much, and steadied out again.

I couldn't judge how far we'd swung but Alice and me watched the green
stars and after about a minute she said, "They're getting closer," and a
little while later I said, "Yeah, for sure."

I scanned the board. The green button--the cracking-plant button, to
call it that--was locked down of course. The Atla-Hi button was up,
glowing violet. All the other buttons were still up and _locked_ up--I
tried them all again.

* * * * *

It was clear as day used to be. We could either go to Atla-Hi or we
could go back where we'd started from. There was no third possibility.

It was a little hard to take. You think of a plane as freedom, as
something that will carry you anywhere in the world you choose to go,
especially any paradise, and then you find yourself worse limited than
if you'd stayed on the ground--at least that was the way it was
happening to us.

But Alice and me were realists. We knew it wouldn't help to wail. We
were up against another of those "two" problems, the problem of two
destinations, and we had to choose ours.

_If we go back_, I thought, _we can trek on somewhere--anywhere--richer
by the loot from the plane, especially that Survival Kit. Trek on with
some loot we'll mostly never understand and with the knowledge that we
are leaving a plane that can fly, that we are shrinking back from an
unknown adventure_.

_Also if we go back there's something else we'll have to face, something
we'll have to live with for a little while at least that won't be nice
to live with after this cozily personal cabin, something that shouldn't
bother me at all but, dammit, it does._

Alice made the decision for us and at the same time showed she was
thinking about the same thing as me.

"I don't want to have to smell him, Ray," she said. "I am not going back
to keep company with that filthy corpse. I'd rather anything than that."
And she pushed the Atla-Hi bu