"I do," spoke up Nick. "When the Orion left, the only rocket fuel which was any good was HZ 7. It had one fault, however. Let any atmosphere get at it and it would vaporize and seep through practically every known substance, except wax. And that vapor was about ten times as touchy as nitro. When it went off you had a terrific explosion.
"What these fellows did, I take it, Steve, was to seal off the sections from the outside, leaving plenty of room for the vapor to explode, perhaps calculating on its drawing closer while they were at work. Then, they went to work on padding so that the concussion wouldn't completely wreck the ship. Their only chance of escape was completing the job and getting off before the stuff lit up. And working around it was almost a positive guarantee of setting it off."
Hartnett nodded. "That's just about what happened. Three men were on the job of sealing off. That was the sure death assignment, because they would have to be practically entombed inside. Five others were on the padding job; they had a chance of not being smashed to pieces by the concussion if the blow held off long enough.
"But it didn't—not quite long enough. They managed to get their work almost finished. It was just the sheerest luck that the thing didn't fill the entire ship, or go off before some of us were out of the way. That was when we didn't all wait to put on full suits—and it seemed all right outside. Well, the radiation got the ones who survived the blast."
He buried his face in his hands. "It seems as if it happened ten years ago at times, then I feel, sometimes, as if it had happened yesterday."
DOROTHY slipped her arm around him. "It wasn't your fault. Come, tell us more—about the things you found out about this planetoid."
He raised his head, brow wrinkled in concentration. "There's an odd effect at the horizon—maybe you haven't noticed it yet, eh? The equator of the world seems to be moving, flowing along the ground."
"Yow!" exclaimed Edgar. "Lorentz-Fitzgerald stuff!"
"Huh?"
"Simple," he went on. "The speed of rotation of this planetoid at the equator approaches the speed of light, believe it or not. So the equator contracts. Its diameter remains the same, mind you, since it isn't moving along the line of the diameter, but the circumference grows smaller. And that my friends," he concluded. "makes the mathematical 'pi' a variable so far as Hastur is concerned. Geometry on this planet must be hot stuff—a veritable purgatory for mathematicians."
"How the devil did you figure all that out?" exclaimed Hartnett, a note of awed admiration in his voice.
Edgar grinned. "I'm not staking my life on it," he said, "but it's the only explanation I can think of for the phenomenon you described."
"Well, you may be right, and then again.... The important thing, now, is to get off Hastur. These radiations are what got most of us—doesn't make too much difference with me, because I'm old. But I'm assuming," he looked at Dorothy and Nick, "that you two will be wanting to pair off pretty soon. And I don't think Dorothy would care to start knitting little sweaters with holes for three heads in them after she'd had x-rays taken."
"We'll get off," declared Nick, "Our rockets are powerful enough, I think. We'll take what we can from the Orion—and I suspect that you and your book, Steve, will be all—then scram away from here fast."
He clasped Dorothy's hand. "I only want a hole for one head in that little sweater."
JOE TIMBIE turned to Hartnett and Nick with a despairing gesture. "See? All we do is slide along the ground. I've given her the best blasts we have and there's the result."
"A good thing they've found a new kind of rocket fuel in these last years."
When Dorothy came in, Nick gripped her hands and clung to her. There was no need for words. Silently they looked out of the port onto the scene of their prison, grey twilight world with its sky of starlit black.
Finally he straightened up, reached out and pressed the call-button which would summon all hands to the control room.
"There is nothing wrong with the rocket tubes, or the fuel," he said softly when all had come. "Everything is working as it should work. Our rockets just aren't strong enough to get us off."
"But the contracels?" burst out Marquis bewilderedly.
Hartnett shook his head. "No good here."
Bob Vickers went over to the window and looked out, staring at the landscape as if there lay an answer to their problem. "Edgar," he called after a moment, "are you sure about what you said about the equator?"
"No guarantees, but it could very easily be that way."
"Then mightn't an object at the equator be thrown off the planet by centrifugal force?"
Edgar turned to Nick. "It might —matter of fact, it should."
Hartnett bit his lips. "It's a long chance," he said, "but still a chance. If the ship will hold together under the terrific punishment it would have to take, sliding along the ground on our rocket blasts, then we may be able to do it."
"Okay," declared Nick. "Everybody get into space suits, make sure the air-making apparatus is in order, and take your stations. We've got to have lookouts covering all sectors to spot any possible punctures of the hull. As soon as everybody's checked from their posts, Joe, let her rip."
CHAPTER IV
ORDEAL
THEY clung to the stanchions, watching the rocky surface of Hastur lurch by them, even in the protection of their suits horribly jolted by the choppy acceleration. They clung wondering how long the Columbia would stand up under a type of punishment for which it had never been designed.
"Something's wrong," complained Timbie. "The fire should take place so that, to my limited senses it seems continuous. It isn't doing that at all." He pressed. a button. "I can sense a distinct interval between the release of the firing apparatus and the explosion, and another interval before the reaction shoves us ahead."
"Look at the stars!" cried Bob Vickers.
They glanced in the direction of his pointing finger and gasped. Above them in the inky blackness were no longer the tiny pin-points that they had been seeing so far; they had become huge globes of multi-colored light. And there was one immense thing which visibly swam in the ether.
But it was more than just that. Way out beyond the globes, which looked like glowing baseballs, and basketballs, they caught a flashing something. It grew visibly as they watched, swelled until it seemed that it must batter its way through the mass of luminaries around them, send them in flaming ruin down the surface of the little world. Huger and more terrifying it grew, like a movie closeup, until it filled the entire vista of the heavens. The light should have been blinding; it should have burned out their brains, yet they could behold it without so much as being dazzled. Now the size of it was such that no longer could they see its full circle, but only a section of the titanic surface.
Abruptly the smooth aspect of it faded and sharp prominences began to appear. It was no perfect sphere, this body, but a roughly-circular mass, shot through with enormous cracks, riddled with holes, jagged with mountains. One spire-like protuberance seemed to be pointing directly at them, aiming itself at the ship.
Paralyzed with mingled amazement and terror they stood, bracing themselves for an impact which would destroy them utterly, volatilize them and the ship with such titanic swiftness that their consciousness would be obliterated before any sensations of it could reach them. They would see the destroyer almost upon them, and that would be all.
But they were wrong. It screamed down out of the night of space above them, not touching their ship, seemingly a good distance away. No concussion wave struck them, yet they saw the surface of Hastur cleft and crumpled before them, saw the monster bury itself in the planetoid. There was a flare of light which made them blink for an instant, and that was all.