VII
Silently, the four men watched the two ships, waiting for any hostilemovement. There was a long, tense moment, then something happened forwhich three of them were totally unprepared.
Arcot burst into sudden laughter.
"Don't--ho--hoh-ho--oh--don't shoot!" he cried, laughing so hard it wasalmost impossible to understand him. "Ohoh--space--curved!" he managedto gasp.
For a moment more, Morey looked puzzled--then he was laughing as hard asArcot. Helplessly, Wade and Fuller looked at them, then at each other.Then, suddenly, Wade caught the meaning of Arcot's remark and joined theother two in laughter.
"All right," said Fuller, still mystified, "when you half-wittedphysicists recover, please let me in on the joke!" He knew it hadsomething to do with the mysterious ships, so he looked closely at themin hopes that he would get the point, too. When he saw it, he blinked inamazement. "Hey! What is this? Those ships are exact duplicates of the_Ancient Mariner_!"
"That--that's what I was laughing at," Arcot explained, wiping his eyes."Four big, brave explorers, scared of their own shadows!"
"The light from our own ship has come back to us, due to the intensecurvature of the space which encloses us. In normal space, a light raywould take hundreds of millions of years to travel all the way aroundthe Universe and return to its point of origin. Theoretically, it wouldbe possible to photograph our own Galaxy as it was thousands ofmillennia ago by the light which left it then and has traveled all theway around the curvature of space.
"But our space has such terrific curvature that it only takes a fractionof a second for light to make the trip. It has gone all the way aroundour little cosmos and come back again.
"If we'd shot at it, we would have really done ourselves in! The raybeam would go around and hit us from behind!"
"Say, that is a nice proposition!" laughed Fuller. "Then we'll beaccompanied by those ghosts all the way? There goes the spirit 'ninefathoms deep' which moves the ship--the ghosts that work the sails. Thiswill be a real _Ancient Mariner_ trip!"
It was like that famed voyage in another way, too. The men found littleto do as they passed on at high speed through the vast realm of space.The chronometer pointed out the hours with exasperating slowness. Thesix hours that were to elapse before the first stop seemed as many days.They had thought of this trip as a wonderful adventure in itself, butthe soundless continued monotony was depressing. They wandered around,aimlessly. Wade tried to sleep, but after lying strapped in his bunk forhalf an hour, he gave up in despair.
Arcot saw that the strain of doing nothing was not going to be good forhis little crew and decided to see what could be done about it.
He went down to the laboratory and looked for inspiration. He found it.
"Hey! Morey! Wade! Fuller! Come on down here! I've got an idea!" hecalled.
They came to find him looking meditatively at the power pack from one ofthe flying suits he had designed. He had taken the lux metal case offand was looking at the neat apparatus that lay within.
"These are equipped for use with the space suits, of course," Moreypointed out, "and that gives us protection against gases. But I wonderif we might install protection against mechanical injury--with intent todamage aforethought! In other words, why not equip these suits with asmall invisibility apparatus? We have it on the ship, but we might needpersonal protection, too."
"Great idea," said Wade, "provided you can find room in that case."
"I think we can. We won't need to add anything but a few tuning devices,really, and they don't take a whale of a lot of power."
Arcot pointed out the places where they could be put; also, he replacedsome of the old induction coils with one of his new storage cells andgot far higher efficiency from the tubes.
But principally, it was something to do.
Indeed, it was so thoroughly something to do that the six hours hadalmost elapsed before they realized it. In a very short time, theyreturned again to the control room and strapped themselves in.
Arcot reached toward the little red switch that controlled the titanicenergies of the huge coil below and pulled it back a quarter of the way.
"There go the ghosts!" he said. The images had quickly disappeared,seemingly leaping away from them at terrific speed as the space in whichthe ship was enclosed opened out more and more and the curvaturedecreased. They were further away from themselves!
Easing back a quarter at a time, to prevent sparks again flying about inthe atmosphere of the ship, Arcot cut the power to zero, and the shipwas standing still once more.
They hurriedly dived to the observatory and looked eagerly out thewindow.
Far, far behind them, floating in the marvelous, soft, utter blacknessof space, was a shining disc made up of myriads of glowing points. Andit didn't seem to be a huge thing at a great distance, but simply asmall glowing object a few feet outside the window.
So perfectly clear was their view through the lux metal wall and theblack, empty space that all sense of distance was lost. It seemed more aminiature model of their universe--a tiny thing that floated closebehind them, unwavering, shining with a faint light, a heatlessillumination that made everything in the darkened observatory glow veryfaintly. It was the light of three hundred million suns seen at adistance of three million million million miles! And it seemed smallbecause there was nothing with which to compare it.
It was an amazingly beautiful thing, that tiny floating disc of light.
Morey floated over to the cameras and began to take pictures.
"I'd like to take a color shot of that," he said a few minutes later,"but that would require a direct shot through the reflector telescopeand a time exposure. And I can't do that; the ship is moving."
"Not enough to make any difference," Arcot contradicted. "We're movingaway from it in a straight line, and that thing is three quintillionmiles away. We're not moving fast enough to cause any measurablecontraction in a time exposure. As for having a steady platform, thisship weighs a quarter of a million tons and is held by gyroscopes. Wewon't shake it."
While Morey took the time exposure, Arcot looked at the enlarged imagein the telectroscope and tried to make angular measurements from theindividual stars. This he found impossible. Although he could spotBetelgeuse and Antares because of their tremendous radiation, they weretoo close together for measurements; the angle subtended was too small.
Finally, he decided to use the distance between Antares and S Doradus inthe Lesser Magellanic Cloud, one of the two clouds of stars which floatas satellites to the Galaxy itself.
To double-check, he used the radius of the Galaxy as base to calculatethe distance. The distances checked. The ship was five hundred thousandlight years from home!
After all the necessary observations were made, they swung the ship onits axis and looked ahead for a landing place.
The nebulae ahead were still invisible to the naked eye except aspoints, but the telectroscope finally revealed one as decidedly nearerthan the rest. It seemed to be a young Island Universe, for there wasstill a vast cloud of gas and dust from which stars were yet to be bornin the central whorl--a single titanic gas cloud that stretched outthrough a million billion miles of space.
"Shall we head for that?" asked Arcot at last, as Morey finished hisobservations.
"I think it would be as good as any--there are more stars there than wecan hope to visit."
"Well, then, here we go!"
Arcot dived for the control room, while Morey shut off the telectroscopeand put the latest photographs in the file.
Suddenly space was snapping about him--they were off again. Anothershock of surging energy--another--the ship leaped forward at tremendousspeed--still greater--then they were rushing at top speed, and besidethem ran the ghost ships of the _Ancient Mariner_.
Morey pushed himself into the control room just as Arcot, Wade, andFuller were getting ready to start for the lab.
"We're off for quite a while, now," he said. "Our goal is about fivedays away. I s
uggest we stop at the end of four days, make moreaccurate measurements, then plan a closer stop.
"I think from now on we ought to sleep in relays, so that there will bethree of us awake at all times. I'll turn in now for ten hours, and thensomeone else can sleep. Okay?"
It was agreed, and in the meantime the three on duty went down to thelab to work.
Arcot had finished the installation of the invisibility apparatus in hissuit at the end of ten hours, much to his disappointment. He tested it,then cast about for something to do while Wade and Morey added thefinishing touches to theirs.
Morey came down, and when Wade had finished his, which took anotherquarter of an hour, he took the off duty shift.
Arcot had gone to the library, and Morey was at work down below. Fullerhad come up, looking for something to do, and had hit upon the excellentidea of fixing a meal.
He had just begun his preparations in the kitchen when suddenly the_Ancient Mariner_ gave a violent leap, and the men, not expecting anyweight, suddenly fell in different ways with terrific force!
Fuller fell half the length of the galley and was knocked out by theblow. Wade, asleep in bed, was awakened violently by the shock, andMorey, who had been strapped in his chair, was badly shaken.
Everyone cried out simultaneously--and Arcot was on his way to thecontrol room. The first shock was but a forerunner of the storm.Suddenly the ship was hurled violently about; the air was shot throughwith great burning sparks; the snapping hiss of electricity waseverywhere, and every pointed metal object was throwing streamers ofblue electric flame into the air! The ship rocked, heaved, and cavortedwildly, as though caught in the play of titanic forces!
Scrambling wildly along the hand-holds, Arcot made his way towards thecontrol room, which was now above, now below, and now to one side of himas the wildly variable acceleration shook the ship. Doggedly, he workedhis way up, frequently getting severe burns from the flaming sparks.
Below, in the power room, the relays were crashing in and out wildly.
Then, suddenly, a new sound was added just as Arcot pulled himself intothe control chair and strapped himself down. The radiation detectorbuzzed out its screaming warning!
"COSMIC RAYS!" Arcot yelled. "HIGH CONCENTRATION!"
He slapped at the switch which shot the heavy relux screens across everywindow in the ship.
There was a sudden crash and a fuse went out below--a fuse made of asilver bar two feet thick! In an instant, the flames of the burningsparks flared up and died. The ship cavorted madly, shaking mightily inthe titanic, cosmic forces that surrounded it--the forces that made thehighest energy form in the universe!
Arcot knew that nothing could be done with the power coil. It wasdrained; the circuit was broken. He shifted in the molecular drive,pushing the acceleration to four gravities, as high as the men couldstand.
And still the powerful ship was being tossed about, the plaything ofinconceivable forces. They lived only because the forces did not try toturn the ship more violently, not because of the strength of the ship,for nothing could resist the awful power around them.
As a guide, Arcot used the compass gyroscope, the only one not twistedfar out of its original position; with it, he managed to steer a fairlystraight course.
Meanwhile, in the power room, Wade and Morey were working frantically toget the space-strain drive coil recharged. Despite the strength-sappingstrain of working under four gravities of acceleration, they managed toget the auxiliary power unit into operation. In a few moments, they hadit pouring its energies into the coil-bank so that they could charge upthe central drive coil.
Another silver bar fuse was inserted, and Wade checked the relays tomake sure they were in working order.
Fuller, who had regained consciousness, worked his way laboriously downto the power room carrying three space-suits. He had stopped in the labto get the power belts, and the three men quickly donned them to helpthem overcome the four-gravity pull.
Another half hour sped by as the bucking ship forced its way through theterrific field in space.
Suddenly they felt a terrific jolt again--then the ship was moving moresmoothly, and gradually it was calm. They were through!
"Have we got power for the space-strain drive yet?" Arcot called throughthe intercom.
"Enough," Morey cried. "Try it!"
Arcot cut off the molecular motion drive, and threw in all thespace-control power he had. The ship was suddenly supercharged withenergy. It jarred suddenly--then was quiet. He allowed ten minutes topass, then he cut off the drive and allowed the ship to go into freefall.
Morey's voice came over the intercom. "Arcot, things are really bustedup down here! We had to haywire half the drive together."
"I'll be right down. Every instrument on the ship seems to be out ofkilter!"
It was a good thing they had plenty of spare parts; some of the smallerrelays had burned out completely, and several of the power leads hadfused under the load that had been forced through them.
The space-strain drive had been leaking energy at a terrific rate;without further repair, it could not function much longer.
In the power room, Arcot surveyed the damage. "Well, boys, we'd betterget to work. We're stranded here until we get that drive repaired!"