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Updated: May 29, 2025
He took longer than usual, making sure the lead baffling around the reactor units and the reaction chamber was secure, before firing the initial mass. Finally Tom's voice crackled over the intercom, "Control deck to all stations. Check in!" "Radar bridge, aye!" came Roger's reply. "Ready for blast-off!" "Power deck, aye!" said Astro, his booming voice echoing through the ship.
"Mission accomplished, sir. And you were quite right. One of our Security servos is off balance. I'm attending to the matter." "Thank you, Mr. Blackhawk." The captain's voice was calm, quite unlike the voice he'd used to them on the bridge. "You would do well to listen for the ... sound ... of those servos." The captain's voice stopped but the intercom continued to hum, alive from his end.
It will take ten minutes if we hit it lucky and find the bad tubes in the first two tries, and about twenty hours if we hit on the last try. "That, of course, is presuming that there are only two out. If there are three...." He let it hang. Mike grinned as Dr. Morris Fitzhugh's voice came over the intercom, confirming his diagnosis of the situation.
Suddenly the ship trembled violently and then shot forward as, far below, the jet exhausts screamed under the full thrust of all the atomic reactors. Tom rode the controls hard and kept his eye on the scanner screen. "It's a magnetic gyrofish!" he cried as he saw the torpedo curve after them. "Roger, can you plot her for me?" "Working on it now, Tom!" yelled Roger over the intercom.
"No," Hemmingwell spoke up from his daze. "I want to stay with my ship." "Hey!" Roger cried over the intercom. "We're getting company!" "Company?" exclaimed Tom. "What're you talking about?" "A Solar Guard cruiser," replied Roger. "Coming up to port. About five hundred miles away. Hey! It's the Polaris!" "It must be Captain Strong!" shouted Tom. "He won't do us much good now," muttered Connel.
Tom slipped off the straps of the acceleration chair and raced to the intercom. Vidac made no attempt to stop him. "Astro! Full emergency thrust! Hit it!" In immediate reply, a jolting burst of power blasted through the tubes, jerking the ship convulsively and throwing Tom to the deck. A loud, crashing sound filled the ship, followed by a strange stillness.
Roger's voice called over the intercom. "It's blasting on maximum thrust now. We have a pretty good chance. Use that idea we worked out. Make a series of left turns and always on the up-plane of the ecliptic!" "Right!" said Tom, clutching the master manual-control lever and beginning to fly the giant ship through space by "feel."
Suddenly they felt a terrific jolt again then the ship was moving more smoothly, and gradually it was calm. They were through! "Have we got power for the space-strain drive yet?" Arcot called through the intercom. "Enough," Morey cried. "Try it!" Arcot cut off the molecular motion drive, and threw in all the space-control power he had. The ship was suddenly supercharged with energy.
Entering Earth's atmosphere, Tom gave a series of rapid orders for course changes and power adjustments, and then, depressing the master turn control, spun the ship around so that she would settle stern first toward her ramp at the Academy spaceport. "Radar deck to control deck," called Roger over the intercom. "One thousand feet to touchdown!" "Control deck, aye," answered Tom.
Under control from the bridge, the huge ship yawed until her nose and thus the line of thrust along her longitudinal axis was pointed toward her destination. "Full acceleration, Mister Gabriel," said Captain Quill over the intercom. Mike the Angel watched the meters climb again as the ship speared away from the sun at an ever-increasing velocity.
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