Then the chief said warmly, "Joe, you did a job of work!"
And Arlene Gray, with her teeth clamped tightly, looked out a shielded port on the shadow side of the ship and saw the Laboratory hanging stationary in space.
It was a rocket-ship, or it had been. It was very much larger than the Earthship. Since it would float in space without ever being out of sunshine, one-half of it was brightest silvery metal, and one-half was dead-black. Temperature was adjusted by varying the amount of silver which reflected heat and light away, and the black which radiated heat to the stars. There was an airlock, much too small to admit the Earthship and there were ports. There were some curious tubular blisters—position-adjusting rockets could be loaded into them from within the ship and fired.
To Arlene, the Laboratory looked like a derelict floating in emptiness; as a matter of fact, it was much more depressing than that. This was a place in which men had set out soberly to make a discovery which might be beneficent, gambling that they would not acquire knowledge by which a Madman could destroy humanity.
The space-radio speaker said wearily, "Well, who are you and what's it all about?"
"This is the Earthship," said Kenmore into the microphone before him. "The Shuttle's smashed. We're bringing orders from Earth. How about opening your lock?" The voice muttered. Then it said, as wearily as before, "Opening up now. It would be amusing if . . ."
There was a muffled sound, and then silence.
The silence continued. A long time later, the chief said, "There's the lock opening. This looks queer to me!" Kenmore shrugged. "Mike says they've all gone wacky. He says they've flipped. They're looping."
The lock in the side of the Laboratory-ship swung open. Kenmore said irritably, "I ought to do this, but— Chief, will you go in our lock and moor the two ships together?"
The chief unstrapped himself, and floated to the inner lock-door of the ship from Earth. It closed behind him. There was a long, long period during which Kenmore jockeyed the Earthship closer to the Laboratory, and the lock pump throbbed. Then silence. Another long wait, and they heard a singularly unpleasant clanking noise; the two ships had touched.
The chief's voice came through by suit-talkie. "I'm using the outside ladders for mooring-bitts. It means there has to be a gap between the hulls."
"No matter," said Kenmore impatiently. "We'll go on board."
"I'll go ahead. I'm stepping over to the other ship. I'll close this lock-door."
There was the sound of its closing, and Kenmore fumed a little. He was going on board the ship he'd really been working for since the beginning of things extraterrestrial, bringing instructions to quit. He felt wretched.
Moreau climbed into a vacuum suit; Arlene started to get into another.
"You can wait," suggested Kenmore ungraciously. "We shouldn't be long. They're ordered to abandon ship and come back with us."
Arlene said in a still voice, "I'd like to come, Joe."
She couldn't have explained why she wanted to board the Laboratory.
The three of them—Kenmore, Arlene, and Moreau— went into the Earth ship's airlock and waited while the pump throbbed and their suits took on the curious, bouncy feel of a vacuum suit in emptiness. Joe loosened his space-rope and clipped the end of it through Arlene's belt; Moreau hooked on, too.
The lock-door opened, and the ships were not two feet apart, but four or five. The other lock didn't reopen; the chief had gone in the other ship. Kenmore stepped out to emptiness, and floated across the gulf. He caught at handholds and tried the lock-door. He put his helmet against the other ship's side. He said, "The pump's running. The chief went in."
He waited, and Arlene looked out of the gap between the spacecraft.
It was a mistake. She was used to no weight, of course; she was accustomed to the sensations of upside-downness, and topsy-turvy dimensions, which rocket travel involves. But nobody can quite disabuse himself of an idea that there is an up, and that there is a down.
Arlene looked down toward her feet, and saw an abyss of stars. She caught her breath and looked upward; the selfsame abyss loomed there—and to either side. She could not see sun or moon or Earth; where she stood in the open airlock door there were only stars. It seemed that if she took one step outward she would fall forever, shrieking, toward nothingness.
But then Kenmore got the other airlock open; he went in. He took a firm grip inside, and tugged at the rope attached to Arlene's waist. Sheer hysterical panic yammered at her. And then she stepped toward him and was drawn across the abyss, with her eyes tight-shut.
She did not open them again until she heard the lock-door close. Then her teeth chattered, but she did look about her. Moreau was in the lock also, and air was coming in.
But something was wrong with the air. The bouncy feeling of their suits ceased; then there was a new feeling, very peculiar and breathless. Kenmore looked at the lock air gauge, and seemed startled. He opened his faceplate. Moreau followed suit. They spoke sharply. Arlene opened her helmet. She had trouble with the faceplate; it seemed to stick, but she forced it open, and a puff of wind struck her cheek But there should be no wind in an airlock!
Her ears buzzed and she swallowed. Arlene said, "Joe, what . . She gasped. Her voice was loud, too loud.
"Something's very wrong," said Kenmore grimly. He had not raised his voice at all, but it was like a shout. "The pressure's too high. Much too high!"
Arlene's ears buzzed again and she swallowed. A moment later they buzzed still once more.
Kenmore said evenly, "We can't open the outer door against this pressure! They must have had an air-tank leak inside the ship. Unless somebody's cracked up . . ."
Then they heard clankings, the perfectly natural sounds of the undogging of an inner airlock door before it opens, only magnified.
Then the lock-door opened to the inside of the ship, and they saw the chief, his face very pale beneath its bronze pigment. His expression was sternness itself.
"Get Arlene back to the ship, Joe," he said harshly. "I'll try to argue with these guys. They've cracked up to a fare-you-well!"
His voice boomed. It roared. It echoed and re-echoed.
The eight men of the Laboratory's staff and crew were gathered in the compartment beyond the airlock. One of them floated placidly in midair, watching the newcomers with bright eyes. A white-bearded man stood head-downward on the ceiling, held there by his magnetic-soled shoes, and looked at them with an ironic expression on his face. One man sat in a chair on a side wall.
A man in a laboratory smock, with pince-nez glasses, spoke in a refined voice which had the volume of a bellow:
"Mr. Kenmore, I believe. We expected Mike in the Shuttle. I am afraid we cannot receive you for more than a very few minutes, if you wish to be able to leave. We have loosed all our reserve air tanks into the ship. The air pressure now is ninety pounds to the square inch, or higher. It is equal to the pressure on a diver at two hundred feet underwater. If you stay more than twenty minutes, you will have what divers call—ah—the bends when you leave. We have been under this pressure for seventy-two hours, and our body tissues are thoroughly saturated with nitrogen. It is impossible for any of us to leave this laboratory. At the least we would become paralyzed. At the best we would die immediately. Will you leave, please?" -
His tone was determinedly matter-of-fact, but his hands shook uncontrollably.
The chief said, "The fools did it, Joel That guy'll show you."
The man in the chair on the wall grinned mirthlessly at them and put a cigarette to his lips. He struck a light. The flame rose six inches. He touched it to the cigarette and inhaled. The cigarette burned to ashes with the one draught upon it. Such a thing could only happen in compressed air, with a superabundance of oxygen.