For the first time since he had known her, Gret Helmuth smiled. It was
a warm smile and it did strange things to Pell. Before she could reply
to his peace offering, his arms were around her and he kissed her. She
seemed to respond instinctively for a moment, then pushed him away.
She laughed and said cynically, "That was a rather obvious development,
wasn't it?" She disappeared down the narrow passage-way to the waist.
Pell savored the memory of her lips for a moment, then grimaced to
himself. She was right, of course.
He exhaled a cloud of smoke and watched its tendrils stream around
the control panel and fluff against the plastine observation shield.
He tried not to look at the blackness outside because it hurt his
eyes. Men had been known to go mad from looking too long at the alien
strangeness of this extra-dimensional space which was not for human
eyes. Its very nothingness seemed to twist at one's mind.
He glanced at his instruments, then at the celestial navigation globe.
In normal space the ship had traveled some four and one-third light
years. But in hyper-space it had moved very little during the two hours
it had been under the Thelmard.
He turned to Gret. "We've arrived--at least that's what this thing
says." He patted the globe. "How's Heintz?"
"Okay now. I gave him some more amytal."
"Umm. That's dangerous stuff--be careful," Pell said. "We're going to
fall free again--watch it!"
He cut the converter and deftly cranked up the detectors to full
sensitivity. Then he held his breath as he cut the Thelmard and dropped
out of hyper-space for an instant. He jumped in spite of himself as all
hell broke loose. The detector alarm clamored deafeningly and its red
light blinked feverishly.
Throwing up the Thelmard again, Pell turned to the girl and mopped his
brow. "I don't think they caught us on their own detectors, but we
almost dropped out in their laps." He grinned.
"We now have a first class, double-barreled problem on our hands. This
bucket has momentum amounting to about 600 miles per second. We've got
to get rid of that. But if we do it too soon the DIC boys will be able
to match our speed. And if we do it too late, we'll make quite a puddle
on Centaura.
"Naturally," he went on, "they've concentrated most of their strength
at zenith and nadir. So we'll drop out of hyper-space in the elliptic
and try to fall in free from there. They won't be able to detect us for
quite a while and they won't be able to match our 600 miles per second
in time to catch us. But I'm afraid we'll have to run the gauntlet of
DIC cruisers already in position."
He glanced at her. Excitement burned two red spots high on her cheeks.