Part 2

"We're clear, _Saturn_," he wired. "Thanks for getting off course. You're too far off, though. Better watch out. You're headed smack into the vacuole."

I wired back, "We like it that way," and refused to pay any attention to his continued queries. A dismal silence had fallen over my turret. The hypatomics had picked up now; I could tell by the vibration that we were on our way, full steam ahead, toward--what?

I found out. Not then, and not for several hours, but at dinnertime. I had just taken my seat at the table and Slops was just leaning over my shoulder, ladling soup into my bowl, when there came a high, shrieking whine from the engine room, the lights flickered, something went boomety-clang--and the bottom fell out of the universe!

My stomach gave a sickening lurch, so did the mess hall, so did Slops, and so did the soup. About four of us went into an involuntary huddle on the floor; when I came up again I had purée of vegetables, luke-warm, all over me, and my hair had so many alphabet noodles in it you could have rented me out at a public library.

The din was terrific, but it all meant one thing; a question admirably summed up by the badly frightened Slops as he screamed, "Wotinell's the matter!"

I said wearily, "Sue me if I'm wrong, friends. But I believe our screwball navigator, Mr. Biggs, has finally piloted us into the vacuole...."

* * * * *

The funny part is, Biggs wasn't even dismayed about it! I made a half-hearted pretense at eating, then skipped up to the bridge to find out what--if anything--Biggs was doing about this new disaster.

The answer was obvious. Absolutely nothing. Pale of face, but still determined of mien, he was sitting in the control pilot's lounge-chair shaking his head stubbornly as Cap Hanson, Lt. Todd, Chief Engineer Garrity and every other brevetman aboard the ship bombarded him with pleas to "do something!"

"Gentlemen," he said, "gentlemen, I ask you to remember that Captain Hanson assigned me the privilege of navigating this trip. As navigator, it is my right to do what I consider best--"

Todd, who liked Biggs, said nervously, "But, Lance, we're right in the middle of the vacuole! Aren't you going to give orders for a back-drag? We've got to get out of here. Heaven only knows--"

Cap Hanson was purple with impotent rage. "Wait!" he was squalling. "Just wait till we get back to Earth! I'm goin' to have you busted out of the service as soon as--" A strange look came over his face. "Golly! _When_ we get back to Earth? We ain't never gonna get there less'n we do somethin' quick!"

Lancelot Biggs said, "Be patient, gentlemen!"

Garrity said cajolingly, "Look, lad--mayhap you don't understand the difficulties we're in? Suppose you be a good chap an' let the Skipper take the controls--?"

Lancelot Biggs said, "Just be patient. I would like to explain, but I think I'd better not! Not yet--at any rate."

Cap looked at me. I put in my two cents' worth.

"Mr. Biggs," I said, "you can read those charts on the wall. Don't you see we're being carried hundreds of thousands of miles off course? This vacuole is traveling way over to the right of our course, hitting an abnormal rate of speed--and we're imbedded in it like a fly in amber. We've already lost the race; pretty soon we'll lose our--" I stopped, not wanting to say "lives" in front of Diane.

Lancelot looked at me somberly.

"I should have thought, Sparks," he told me, "that _you_ would understand. With your education and training--" But he seemed undecided. He stared at Diane. "Diane--you believe in me, don't you?"

Boy, I'll tell you that gal has what it takes. A long moment passed, during which Diane looked squarely into Lancelot Biggs' eyes. What she found there, only she could tell you. But, "Yes, Lancelot," she said. "I trust you."

His shoulders stiffened, then, just the slightest bit. And a faint smile gathered at the corners of his lips. He said, "That's all I wanted to hear. Very well, gentlemen, be patient for just ten more hours...."

* * * * *

By far the worst feature of being caught in a vacuole is the fact that you're completely isolated from the rest of the universe. These super-spatial areas; these dead spots of hyper-emptiness, do not obey the common laws of space mechanics. There's no radio transmission through a vacuole; the only laws that seem to apply are the laws of motion and relativity.

This time, even the relativist principles seemed to go haywire. Lancelot Biggs had demanded that we be patient for ten hours--but to me those ten hours seemed like ten centuries. Millennia, maybe. Seconds crawled. Minutes dragged. Hours were fabulous periods of time. You could almost sit still and feel your hair graying on your scalp.

I tried to read a book, and gave it up as a bad job after I discovered I'd re-read the same page six times. Then I fiddled with my dials, but all I could get out of them was a strange, singing, unearthly hum. I had a feeling of boding suspense, as though I were an insensate beast caged in an elevator that was rising through darkness to an unguessed destination.

Boy, am I getting poetic! Anyhow, that's how I felt, and if you want to make something of it, stop down by the IPS spaceport at Long Island and ask for Bert Donovan!

I managed to while away a couple of hours figuring out where the _Slipstream_ was by this time. Like I said, she was a five-day freighter. But she'd lost almost a full day in her tangle with the vacuole--_our_ vacuole--and in spite of the fact that she'd now put on every bit of juice she had, she wouldn't make the trip in much less than five and a half days.

Which, of course, didn't help us any. The _Saturn_ was normally a ten-day ship. Now, caught in the vacuole, it was a question of when, if ever, we got back onto our trajectory.

What puzzled me most was the fact that in the past I'd come to look upon Lancelot Biggs as something of a genius; the kind of guy who could pull rabbits out of a hat. Like the time he rescued our ship from Runt Hake and his pirate crew.[3] But now Biggs seemed to have gone into a complete funk; a wan and stubborn silence as to his reasons for having given up the battle.

[Footnote 3: Fantastic Adventures, February, 1940.--Ed.]

Well, it was his business; not mine. He'd buttered his bread--now let him lie in it! I looked at the clock once more. Nine hours had elapsed; a little more than that. So I sauntered back to the bridge.

Everyone up there was in a fine state of the jitters--except Mr. Biggs and Diane. With fine disregard for those about them, they were curled up together on a chart-table reading poetry! Cap Hanson had gnawed his fingernails down to the second knuckle. Dick Todd was pacing the floor like a captive wild-cat. I said, meekly enough, "Mr. Biggs--the ten hours is almost up."

"Mmmm!" said Lancelot Biggs.

Cap Hanson turned on him savagely. "Well! Well, do something! And you, Diane, I'm ashamed of you! Sitting here with that--that nincompoop's head draped all over your shoulder!"

Diane rose, smiling pertly. "All right, so I'm untidy. Well--show them, Lancelot!"

Biggs rose. He looked carefully at the clock; then at the statometer. He moved to the intercommunicating system, gargled a word to the engine room below. "Mr. Garrity, would you be kind enough to revolve the ship?"

Hanson yelled, "Re--revolve the--Hey! Grab him, somebody! He's gone space-batty! He's slipped his gravs!"

From below there came the sound of the rotors going into operation. We couldn't feel anything, of course. The ship's artificial gravs hold you firm to the floor no matter which is top or bottom in space. There being no such thing. After a minute Biggs said, "Thank you, Mr. Garrity. Now, if you will be kind enough to reverse gravs and throw out the top-deck repulsion beams?"

Garrity obeyed. There came a sudden shock; everything movable in the room moved. Including me. I fell to the middle of the room, hung there gaping, weightless, the same as everyone else. The _Saturn_ lurched and shuddered; it felt as if something trembled along her beams for a brief instant.

Then, suddenly, we were literally scorching through space again! _Real_ space--not that phoney hyper-stuff of the vacuole. Biggs yelled, "Normal gravs, Garrity! Alter course to point-six-one for three minutes, then land...."

Cap Hanson screamed, "What the--what's going on here? Land? What do you mean--_land_!"

And Lancelot Biggs said, "If you'll be kind enough to look through the _perilens_, Captain...."

It was Earth. Just as big as life and three times as natural. A hop-skip-and-jump beneath us. We had made the Venus-to-Earth shuttle in four days, eight hours!

* * * * *

Afterward, when the Government committee had left, congratulating us upon having won the allotment, and the IPS officials had departed like a trio of overgrown sunbeams on legs, Hanson, Todd, Diane, Biggs and I were alone in the control turret of the _Saturn_.

To the smiling First Mate, Cap Hanson said, "Biggs, this business of apologizin' to you after every crackpot adventure is gettin' monotonous. But I do it again--with the provision that you tell me how the hell an' what the hell happened."

Biggs fidgeted and looked uncomfortable.

"Well, to begin with, I knew we were licked if we tried to race the _Slipstream_ in any normal fashion--"

"The proper word," I interjected, "is skunked."

"Yes. So when I saw what happened to the _Slipstream_ when it fell into the vacuole, I saw a way in which we might possibly come out on top. I didn't want to explain, though, for if the method failed, Captain Hanson might be reprimanded for permitting the trial--"

"Method?" demanded Hanson. "What method?"

"Piggy-back!" grinned Biggs. "You'll remember that we commented on the amazing speed with which the vacuole was traveling through space. A speed greater than our own; even greater than that of the _Slipstream_.

"I purposely plunged the _Saturn_ into the vacuole. The _Slipstream_, caught in that same sphere of hyper-space, made the mistake of back-dragging free. I let the vacuole carry us to Earth. It's as simple as that!"

Hanson said dazedly, "Simple? Which? The method or me? You done so many funny things--for instance, we got out of the vacuole without back-draggin'. How?"

"Oh, that! Well, that was just a little thing I figured out while we were waiting. It seemed stupid to waste fuel back-dragging from a pocket in space. After all, the easiest way out of a pocket is to let yourself be _dumped_ out. I just reversed the gravitational plates, let Earth, which I had reckoned mathematically to be 'above' us, attract us out of the pocket.

"Since there is neither 'up' nor 'down' in space, we merely fell out of the vacuole pocket!"

"It penetrates," said Cap Hanson admiringly. "Yep, it finally penetrates. Well, boys?"

He glanced at us significantly. I knew what he was thinking. Diane and Biggs were showing unmistakable signs of wanting to be alone. But there was one more thing--

"Look, Mr. Biggs," I said. "Your explanation is all right, but it doesn't clear up the matter of _direction_! The vacuole wasn't traveling on the line of our Venus-Earth trajectory at all. It was shifting to starboard by fifteen points, which is why we were able to intersect it. How come--"

Lancelot Biggs looked faintly surprised.

"Why, Sparks, didn't you guess? That was the thing that made our amazing speed possible. To us, traveling our ten-day route, it _looked_ as if the vacuole were moving to the right of Earth. Actually it was moving directly toward the spot where Earth would be in ten more hours. It was, in a way of speaking, an express-train racing along a short-cut. We hopped the train, and--here we are!"

There was a tiny cough from somewhere under the shelter of his arm. A soft voice said, "Sparks--"

"Yes, Miss Diane?"

"Sparks--would you mind closing the door on the way out, please?" asked Diane Hanson.

So I did. I can take a hint as well as the next guy....