Part 13 (2/2)

”Time, man, time! We are in an advanced time plane, living faster than they, our atoms of fuel are destroyed faster, our second is shorter. In one second of our earthly time our generators do the same amount of work as usual, but they do many, many times more work in one second, of the time we were in! We are under the advanced time field.”

Wade could see it all. The red light--normal light seen through eyes enormously speeded in all perceptions. The change, the dimness--dim because less energy reached them per second of their time. Then came this blue light, as they reached the X-ray spectrum of Sirius, and saw X-rays as normal light--s.h.i.+elded, tremendously s.h.i.+elded by the atmosphere, but the enormous amplification of the eyes made up for it.

The remaining Thessians seemed to get the idea simultaneously, and started for Arcot in his own time field. The Thessian s.h.i.+p appeared to be actually leaping at him. Suddenly, his speed increased inconceivably.

Simultaneously, Arcot's hand, already started toward the s.p.a.ce-control switch, reached it, and pushed it to the point that threw the s.h.i.+p into artificial s.p.a.ce. The last glimmer of light died suddenly, as the Thessian s.h.i.+p's bow loomed huge beside the _Ancient Mariner_.

There was a terrific shock that hurled the s.h.i.+p violently to one side, threw the men about inside the s.h.i.+p. Simultaneously the lights blinked out.

Light returned as the automatic emergency incandescent lights in the room, fed from an energy store coil, flashed on abruptly. The men were white-faced, tense in their positions. Swiftly Morey was looking over the indicators on his remote-reading panel, while Arcot stared at the few dials before the actual control board.

”_There's an air pressure outside the s.h.i.+p!_” he cried out in surprise.

”High oxygen, very little nitrogen, breathable apparently, provided there are no poisons. Temperature ten below zero C.”

”Lights are off because relays opened when the crash short circuited them.” Morey and the entire group were suddenly shaking.

”Nervous shock,” commented Zezdon Afthen. ”It will be an hour or more before we will be in condition to work.”

”Can't wait,” replied Arcot testily, his nerves on edge, too.

”Morey, make some good strong coffee if you can, and we'll waste a little air on some smokes.”

Morey rose and went to the door that led through the main pa.s.sage to the galley. ”Heck of a job--no weight at all,” he muttered. ”There is air in the pa.s.sage, anyway.” He opened the door, and the air rushed from the control room to the pa.s.sage till the pressure was equalized. The door to the power room was shut, but it was bulged, despite its two-inch lux metal, and through its clear material he could see the wreckage of the power room.

”Arcot,” he called. ”Come here and look at the power room. Quintillions of miles from home, we can't shut off this field now.”

Arcot was with him in a moment. The tremendous ma.s.s of the nose of the Thessian s.h.i.+p had caught them full amid-s.h.i.+p, and the powerful ram had driven through the room. Their lux walls had not been touched; only a sledge-hammer blow would have bent them under any circ.u.mstances, let alone breaking them. But the tremendously powerful main generator was split wide open. And the mechanical damage was awful. The prow of the s.h.i.+p had been driven deep into the machine, and the power room was a wreck.

”And,” pointed out Morey, ”we can't handle a job like that. It will take a tremendous amount of machinery back on a planet to work that stuff, and we couldn't bend that bar, let alone fix it.”

”Get the coffee, will you please, Morey? I have an idea that's bound to work,” said Arcot looking fixedly at the machinery.

Morey turned and went to the galley.

Five minutes later they returned to the corridor, where Arcot stood still, looking fixedly at the engine room. They were carrying small plastic balloons with coffee in them.

They drank the coffee and returned to the control room, and sat about, the terrestrians smoking peacefully, the Ortolian and the Talsonian satisfying themselves with some form of mild narcotic from Ortol, which Zezdon Afthen introduced.

”Well, we have a lot more to do,” Arcot said. ”The air-apparatus stopped working a while back, and I don't want to sit around doing nothing while the air in the storage tanks is used up. Did you notice our friends, the enemy?” Through the great pilot's window the bulk of the Thessian s.h.i.+p's bow could be seen. It was cut across with an exact.i.tude of mathematical certainty.

”Easy to guess what happened,” Morey grinned. ”They may have wrecked us, but we sure wrecked them. They got half in and half out of our s.p.a.ce field. Result--the half that was in, stayed in. The half that was out stayed out. The two halves were instantaneously a billion miles apart, and that beautifully exact surface represents the point our s.p.a.ce cut across.

”That being decided, the next question is how to fix this poor old wreck.” Morey grinned a bit. ”Better, how to get out of here, and down to old Neptune.”

”Fix it!” replied Arcot. ”Come on; you get in your s.p.a.ce suit, take the portable telectroscope and set it up in s.p.a.ce, motionless, in such a position that it views both our s.h.i.+p and the nose of the Thessian machine, will you, Wade? Tune it to--seven-seven-three.” Morey rose with Arcot, and followed him, somewhat mystified, down the pa.s.sage. At the airlock Wade put on his s.p.a.ce suit, and the Ortolian helped him with it.

In a moment the other three men appeared bearing the machine. It was practically weightless, though it would fall slowly if left to itself, for the ma.s.s of the _Ancient Mariner_ and the front end of the Thessian s.h.i.+p made a considerable attractive field. But it was clumsy, and needed guiding here in the s.h.i.+p.

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