The pilot on the other side of the control-room said with a trace less than his former zest: 

“That looks like Sirius, over there ...”

“We didn’t head for Proxima Centaurus,” said Jones mildly.  “It’s too close!  And we have to keep the field-plate back on the moon lined up with us, more or less, so we headed out roughly along the moon’s axis.  Toward where its north pole points.”

“Then where are we headed?  Where are we going?”

“We’re not going anywhere just yet,” said Jones without interest.  “We have to find out where we are, and from that—­”

Cochrane ran his hand through his hair.

“Look!” he protested.  “Who’s running this show?  You didn’t tell me you were going to take off!  You didn’t pick out a destination!  You didn’t—­”

Jones said very patiently: 

“We have to try out the ship.  We have to find out how fast it goes with how much field and how much rocket-thrust.  We have to find out how far we went and if it was in a straight line.  We even have to find out how to land!  The ship’s a new piece of apparatus.  We can’t do things with it until we find out what it can do.”

Cochrane stared at him.  Then he swallowed.

“I see,” he said.  “The financial and business department of Spaceways, Inc., has done its stuff for the time being.”

Jones nodded.

“The technical staff now takes over?”

Jones nodded again.

“I still think,” said Cochrane, “that we could have done with a little interdepartmental cooperation.  How long before you know what you’re about?”

Jones shook his head.

“I can’t even guess.  Ask Babs to come up here, will you?”

Cochrane threw up his hands.  He went toward the spiral-ladder-with-handholds that led below.  He went down into the main saloon.  A tiny green light winked on and off, urgently, on the far side.  Babs was seated at a tiny board, there.  As Cochrane looked, she pushed buttons with professional skill.  Bill Holden sat in a strap-chair with his face a greenish hue.

“We took off,” said Holden in a strained voice.

“We did,” said Cochrane.  “And the sun’s a fifth magnitude star from where we’ve got to—­which is no place in particular.  And I’ve just found out that we started off at random and Jones and the pilot he picked up are now happily about to do some pure-science research!”

Holden closed his eyes.

“When you want to cheer me up,” he said feebly, “you can tell me we’re about to crash somewhere and this misery will soon be over.”

Cochrane said bitterly: 

“Taking off without a destination!  Letting Babs come along!  They don’t know how far we’ve come and they don’t know where we’re going!  This is a hell of a way to run a business!”

“Who called it a business?” asked Holden, as feebly as before.  “It started out as a psychiatric treatment!”