"No, sir. _We went right through it!_ At that tremendous speed, our
dimension-extension was zero. Hence it did not affect, nor was it
affected in any way by, the bulk and mass of Jupiter.
"It's as though an exceedingly fine wire, moving at lightning speed,
were to be propelled through a cake of ice. Only in our case, the
'wire' was of zero dimension, and the cake of ice--Jupiter--did not
even recognize that it had been penetrated.
"But--" I shook my head. "But Mr. Biggs realized what this daring
scheme meant. It meant that in addition to our size being reduced to
the infinitesimal, our mass would be raised to the infinite--for that
is the corollary of the contraction theory.
"There had to be some way of getting us back to our normal shape and
size. The only possible method was by the forcible alteration of
our mass. And--Biggs adopted this method. He placed himself in the
life-skiff, gave the necessary orders from there. Then, after the
danger had been averted, he deliberately cast off from the _Saturn_,
tossed himself away from us, a living sacrifice to the mathematical
gods, that we might be safe."
Todd said, "Our mass, for a moment, was infinite--but when he, however
briefly, broke clear, it became _less_ than infinite, giving us a
chance to cut the motors--"
"That's right."
Hanson's eyes were round and wild and fearful.
"But then--where is he! We've got to turn around right away. Find him!
We can't go back without--"