CHAPTER IV

Danger Ahead

I looked at Bert Donovan and he looked at me. Judging by the faces of our two screwball intellectuals, there was something smelly on the _Saturn_. But it was all a deep and dark mystery to me.

I said, "Hank, for old times' sake, would you brush that off again lightly for me? In words of one syllable, what has the little letter _i_ got to do with space flight, gray skies and time-travel?"

But Hank ignored me. On the right track at last, he was developing his arguments.

"Reckon you know more 'bout energy-mass relationships than I do, Lanse. 'Spect you'll remember, then, the transformations cooked up by a guy from our time, feller by the name o' Lorentz? Him an' a couple other guys named Einstein an' Planck fiddled around with hyper-spatial mechanics an' discovered some interestin' things. Includin' the fact that mass is altered when it travels at high velocities.

"Whut I figger musta happened is this. The gadget you invented worked even better'n you expected. It worked so durn well that it give the _Saturn_ one whale of a kick in the pants. Made it accelerate at a speed _greater than that of light_!

"So then what? Why, then the _plus_ universe warn't big enough to hold the _Saturn_ any more! That wild minute or two you talked about was when you exceeded the limitin' velocity. An' then here you was in the minus universe! Which is, so to speak, the negative matrix of the normal _plus_ universe we ordinarily live in."

It didn't make sense to me, but apparently it did to Lieutenant Biggs. He passed a damp palm across a sweating forehead.

"You're right, Cleaver! You must be right, because your argument agrees with all the known theories and observed facts. The incredible readings on our instruments, the weird surroundings in which we find ourselves--" He stared at my friend sombrely. "But what are we going to do? How shall we get out of here?"

Hank said, "Same way we come in. We blast out."

"But I've tried that, Hank," Biggs defended. "Before I realized the full extent of our situation. And nothing happened. There's something strange in the response of the motors. Don't ask me what. It's hard to say, when the _Saturn_ is plunging into beaconless, starless nothing. But stepped-up acceleration is just a waste of fuel."

"Yeah?" mused Hank. "That's queer. Now, I wonder why--"

At that instant came a most unexpected interruption. Todd, who had been quietly tending his controls, suddenly came to life with a startled cry.

"Well, I'll be--Biggs! Captain Hanson!"

"Yes?" Both men answered at once.

"There--there's a large body before us!"

* * * * *

He pressed a button. A glassy pane above the panel glowed into life. As if a portion of the _Saturn's_ prow had been sheared away, I was looking at the vista before us. But it was no longer empty as, according to Biggs, it had been ever since the moment of the "accident." The stark, gray loneliness was relieved now by a monstrous pockmark in space. A giant sphere, imponderably distant, but definitely on our trajectory!

Hanson was a man of action, I learned. He leaped to the intercommunicating system.

"Chief Garrity! Large body for'rd! Reverse hypes and apply drag instantly. Todd, plot a course revision! Man! What a monster! Biggs, get out the charts. Something solid at last. Maybe we've busted back into our own universe!"

Biggs said, "Yes, sir! Right away, sir!" His eyes questioned Hank. But Cleaver shook his head.

"Nope, I don't think so. It ain't logical. That's a phenom--a phenom--a pee-culiarity o' the cockeyed universe we're in--Hey! What's goin' on here?"

The constant hum of the hypatomic motors below, one I had hardly noticed until suddenly it no longer throbbed in my ears, had subtly altered. A brief instant of silence, a jarring concussion--and a deeper, more resonant sound.

Biggs explained, "That's the hypatomics being thrown into reverse. Anti-grav units are activated in the nose of the ship, then when we get the course variation we swing around our objective. Common space practice, Hank."

"That's what," said Hank dubiously, "I figgered. Is it common space practice to make a beeline for danger, though, like Billy-be-damned?"

And he pointed to the visiplate. Biggs' eyes followed his finger--and Biggs gasped.

"Great whirling comets! It's got us caught!"

For despite the mounting clamor of the reversed engines, despite the anti-gravitational units of which Biggs had boasted, despite the swiftly redoubled orders and efforts of a shocked Captain Hanson--the _Saturn's_ speed had definitely increased!

The figure in the plate was looming larger moment by moment, and even to my untrained eye it was plain that we were slam-banging, hell-for-leather, toward a crackup!

Don't ask me what happened in the next few minutes. I wouldn't know. It's all one whirling blind spot in my memory. Up till now, this entire affair had partaken of the nature of a dream. Amusing, not unpleasant, but quite remote and faintly incredible.

Now, suddenly, I realized it was not a dream. But that I, Jim Blakeson, publicity representative of Midland U., had somehow been dragged out of the normal routine of everyday life and thrust into a wild, impossible adventure in a world three centuries beyond my time.

It was a disturbing awakening. It didn't make matters a bit better to realize that I was now--along with five other twentieth century exiles--in imminent peril of being slapped out of existence by a gigantic planet that shouldn't be in a dull, gray universe that didn't exist!

* * * * *

About me, frantic figures boiled and churned. The skipper of the Saturn was bouncing about the control room like a bipedal gadfly, jerking switches, bellowing orders, pawing through charts that--to me at least--were a complete mystery.

Dick Todd still sat, tense and grim-jawed, in his bucket-shaped pilot's chair. His fingers played the banked controls before him as the fingers of an accomplished organist seek stops, but so far as I could see, his movements availed nothing. For the object in the visiplate loomed larger and ever larger.

Lancelot Biggs had wasted very little time scanning charts. Despairing of finding any record of this cosmic visitant, he had grabbed paper and pencil, and was now scrawling hasty calculations. Hank Cleaver was watching him. I glanced at Helen. She was watching Hank. Rather hopefully, I thought.

Hank said, "What's it show, Lanse?"

Biggs looked up at him haggardly.

"The mass of that planet must be terrific. It has a heavy gravitational attraction. We're accelerating by leaps and bounds. At our present rate of acceleration, only about twenty minutes remain before we--we--"

He paused, glancing helplessly at Helen MacDowell. There was a strange longing in his eyes. I remembered, all of a sudden, a fact he had mentioned. That somewhere back on Earth, a girl waited for him. A girl who had promised to be his wife. His next words showed that he shared my thought.

"I don't mind checking out," he said quietly. "We who dare the spaceways risk that hazard always. But I wish I could have seen her once more before--"

It was then that Hallowell pushed forward. He was scared, and plenty scared. So scared that his voice was a thin, bleating yammer.

"Lieutenant, you can at least send us back to our proper time! You can't let us die like this! Without a chance--like trapped rats!"

"Rats!" I said scornfully. "Speak for yourself, Hallowell!" But Lancelot Biggs nodded.

"He's right. We still have twenty minutes. It is not right that you of another age should share our fate. We must get the temporal deflector into operation, send all of you back--"

Hank cried sharply, "Just us? Why not everybody, Lanse? Let's _all_ escape to the twentieth century. The whole kit an' kiboodle!"

But Biggs shook his head.

"I'm afraid that is impossible, Hank. There are limitations to temporal transmission. You and your friends can enter _our_ time because there is no natural barrier, but _we_ cannot violate the established world-line of things that have been. We never were in your time, therefore we cannot now go there. But, wait--"

He spun swiftly to a wall-audio, spoke to the engine room below.

"Get the deflector ready. We're sending our guests back!" Then, nodding to all of us, "If you will come with me--"

* * * * *

We started for the door. But we had taken just a few steps when the audio buzzed. Biggs answered its call, listened for a moment, cried out,

"But Garrity, are you absolutely sure? It can't be! It mustn't be!"

The clacking voice was regretful but positive. I felt a thin, cold edge running up and down my spine. Now I look back upon it, I think I guessed what Garrity was saying even before Biggs turned to us, his eyes wide with sympathy and sorrow.

"My friends," he said in a choked voice, "forgive me for what I must say. Your lot is irrevocably cast with ours. The strain on the motors has burnt out several vital units. There is not time enough now to repair them. The temporal deflector is--useless!"

That was a jolt. The way my several comrades took the message was the measure of their characters. Hallowell cried out sharply, began to scream protests in a frightened voice until Prexy--fat, staid, stuffy old H. Logan, himself--silenced him with a backhander across the mouth.

"That will do, Hallowell!" snapped MacDowell. And he seemed to grow three inches. It was a mile in my estimation. "I think, Lieutenant Biggs," he said, "we need no further apologies. We are not afraid to die with you."

I forgot to dislike the old guy then. I loved him a little bit for that. And I liked Tomkins' reaction, too. The little observatory technician sighed wistfully.

"It's too bad, though. I should have liked to take back to our time a knowledge of some of the marvels we have seen here."

The detective said nothing. He still didn't seem to know what the hell it was all about. But Helen MacDowell was as game as her old man.

She said, "We're not licked yet. I still think Hank--I mean, Mr. Cleaver--will find a way out of this."

Biggs said gently, "I'm afraid not, Mrs. Cleaver. This is the end for all of us."

Helen's eyes darkened suddenly.

"_Mrs._ Cleaver! My dear lieutenant! I'll thank you not to couple my name with that of this--this person! What ever made you think I was his wife? I wouldn't marry him if he were the last man on earth--"

And then Lancelot Biggs did a strange thing! For a startled moment he stared at Helen MacDowell incredulously. Then he loosed a terrific whoop. And I don't mean whisper.

"_Eeee-yow!_" he howled. "You and Hank aren't married?"

"Why, of course not!"

"You--you haven't any children?"

Helen turned brick-red.

"After _all_, Lieutenant--" she began stiffly. "But, _really_!"

I don't think Biggs heard her. For he had leaped to Cleaver's side, was pounding him enthusiastically upon the back and shoulders.

"It's all right, then! You understand--it's all right! Get those brain-cells to work, Hank, old boy! It's in the bag! _Eeee-yowee!_"

And Hank Cleaver, from the depths of a brown study, said suddenly,

"Say, looka here--I been thinkin'--"