been in a fight, baby, and we got a black eye," Pell cracked. "But don't worry—I'll set this can down in spite of those missing jets."

He bent over his instruments again, a furrow slowly forming between his brows. That fight had taken time—too much valuable time. He had just two hours to decelerate from the tremendous velocity of the ship to the comparative slow velocity of Centauri V.

Discarding the last of his caution, he crammed all the braking thrust possible on the ancient converter. Up—up went the gravity needle; up past the red line at 23 G's; up past a heart-wracking 27 G's; up to an inconceivable thirty gravities where it quivered sluggishly.

Pell's body weighed over two and a half tons! His eyes weighed five pounds each and thrust agonizingly against their liquid cushion transparent stops. The converter screamed its super-sonic thunder, setting the separate members of the ship's body to vibrating madly. Every moment was red-hazed agony of an eon's duration; every second a year of exquisite pain.

The blue-green disc of Centauri V expanded visibly in the screen. Even through the observation shield Pell could make out its crescent. The brake jets were doing their work—but it would be a near thing—a very near thing. Pell prayed that there would be no more fighters; aside from the fact that he couldn't maneuver, he could still less afford to lose the time.

When the ball of Centaura puffed over all the screen and its edges were no longer visible, Pell broadcast the prearranged signal of recognition to the planet-mounted blaster batteries below. Scrambled almost beyond analysis and recognition, the acknowledging signal came back.

Suddenly Pell realized that Centaura's curvature had ballooned to flatness and on the heels of that realization came the whispering, high-pitched wail of a ship travelling at high velocity in thin atmosphere. Rapidly the wail became an ear-shattering, sustained screech and the small warning lights of the hull thermometers began to glow redly.

Nose outward, rather than pointed down, Pell continued to brake the ship with all forward thrust, depending upon the planet's attraction to prevent him from hurtling off into space on a tangent and into the jaws of the DIC fleet.

Pell never remembered how many times he blacked out, nor how many revolutions of the planet he made. Shaking the ever encroaching blackness from the borders of his vision, 

 Prev. P 16/38 next