Islands of Space - John W. Campbell (pdf to ebook reader TXT) 📗

molecular drive, pushing the acceleration to four gravities, as high as the men could stand.

And still the powerful ship was being tossed about, the plaything of inconceivable forces. They lived only because the forces did not try to turn 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 twisted far out of its original position; with it, he managed to steer a fairly straight course.

Meanwhile, in the power room, Wade and Morey were working frantically to get the space-strain drive coil recharged. Despite the strength-sapping strain of working under four gravities of acceleration, they managed to get the auxiliary power unit into operation. In a few moments, they had it pouring its energies into the coil-bank so that they could charge up the central drive coil.

Another silver bar fuse was inserted, and Wade checked the relays to make sure they were in working order.

Fuller, who had regained consciousness, worked his way laboriously down to the power room carrying three spacesuits. He had stopped in the lab to get the power belts, and the three men quickly donned them to help them overcome the four-gravity pull.

Another half hour sped by as the bucking ship forced its way through the terrific field in space.

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. It jarred suddenly⁠—then was quiet. He allowed ten minutes to pass, then he cut off the drive and allowed the ship to go into free fall.

Morey’s voice came over the intercom. “Arcot, things are really busted up down here! We had to haywire half the drive together.”

“I’ll be right down. Every instrument on the ship seems to be out of kilter!”

It was a good thing they had plenty of spare parts; some of the smaller relays had burned out completely, and several of the power leads had fused 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 better get to work. We’re stranded here until we get that drive repaired!”

VIII

Forty hours later, Arcot was running the ship smoothly at top speed once again. The four men had gone to bed after more than thirty hours of hard work. That, coupled with the exhaustion of working under four gravities, as they had while the ship was going through the storm, was enough to make them sleep soundly.

Arcot had awakened before the others and had turned on the drive after resetting their course.

After that was done, there was little to do, and time began to hang heavily on Arcot’s hands. He decided to make a thorough inspection of the hull when the others awoke. The terrific strain might have opened cracks in the lux metal hull that would not be detectable from the inside because the inner wall was separated from the outer envelope.

Accordingly, he got out the spacesuits, making sure the oxygen tanks were full and all was ready. Then he went into the library, got out some books, and set about some calculations he had in mind.

When Morey woke, some hours later, he found Arcot still at work on his calculations.

“Hey!” he said, swinging himself into the chair beside Arcot, “I thought you’d be on the lookout for more cosmic rays!”

“Curious delusion, wasn’t it?” asked Arcot blandly. “As a matter of fact, I’ve been busy doing some figuring. I think our chance of meeting another such region is about one in a million million million million. Considering those chances, I don’t think we need to worry. I don’t see how we ever met one⁠—but the chances of hitting one are better than hitting two.”

Just then Fuller stuck his head in the door.

“Oh,” he said, “so you’re at it already? Well, I wonder if one of you could tell me just what it was we hit? I’ve been so busy I haven’t had a chance to think.”

“Don’t take the chance now, then,” grinned Morey. “You might strain your brain.”

“Please!” Fuller pleaded, wincing. “Not before breakfast. Just explain what that storm was.”

“We simply came to a region in space where cosmic rays are created,” explained Arcot.

Fuller frowned. “But there’s nothing out here to generate cosmic rays!”

Arcot nodded. “True. I think I know their real source, but I believe I’ll merely say they are created here. I want to do more work on this. My idea for an energy source greater than any other in the universe has been confirmed.

“At any rate, they are created in that space, a perfect vacuum, and the space there is distorted terrifically by the titanic forces at work. It is bent and twisted far out of the normal, even curvature, and it was that bumpy spot in space that threw us about so.

“When we first entered, using the space-strain drive, the space around the ship, distorted as it was, conflicted with the region of the cosmic ray generation and the ship lost out. The curvature of space that the ship caused was sometimes reinforced and sometimes cancelled out by the twisted space around it, and the tremendous surges of current back and forth from the main power coil to the storage coils caused the electric discharges that kept burning through the air. I notice we all got a few burns from that. The field was caused by the terrific surges of current, and that magnetic field caused the walls of the ship to heat up due to the generation of electric current in the walls.”

Fuller looked around at