Then he saw in his telescreen the little old lady who was Caroline
Gordon, dietician and televisor, press a button on the side of her
chair. Instantly the picture changed. He heard her voice. "You see the
rocket room of the _Alpha_ back almost seventy-five years, a few
minutes before the accident."
* * * * *
There were the four torpedo-like tubes projecting into the cylindrical
room; the mass of levers, buttons, wheels and flashing lightspots.
Halter watched John Crowley, the rocketman, broad-shouldered and
lithe, turning a wheel at the point of one of the giant tubes.
The next moment, he was flung to the floor. He struggled to his feet,
jerked an oxygen mask from the bag at his chest, clamped it to his
face and rushed to the tubes. He twirled wheels, pulled levers,
pressed buttons. He glanced at the board on which the lightspots had
been flashing. Darkness. He pressed a button. A foot-thick metal door
swung open. He stepped through it. The door shut and locked.
Leaning against the steel wall at the end of a long companionway, he
pulled off his oxygen mask and ran along the companionway toward the
control room.
The others met him in the center of the ship.
Crowley saluted the young Captain McClelland.
"The rockets are gone, sir. A meteor."
McClelland did not smile or frown, show sadness or fear or any other
emotion. He was tall and slim then, with cropped black hair, its line
high on his head. His face was lean and strong-featured. There was a
sense of command about the captain.