An eye-searing 12 G's ... then 15 ... 18.... Finally the needle came to quivering rest at a lung-torturing, bone-crushing 20 G's. The converter screamed just above audio-frequency. The wheezy thing seemed to be pushing like a little trooper, Pell reflected.

His inter-com crackled for a moment, then he heard the labored voice of Gret Helmuth.

"Nice work, Pell. Do you think there will be any more trouble getting out of the system?"

"No, but hold tight, just in case. How's Heintz?"

"He's ... asleep."

Pell grunted to himself. He was worried about the fat man; the acceleration wouldn't do his heart much good. He tried to settle back in his shock suit more comfortably, then realized that the acceleration held him like a vise. Already the oil-cushioned buoyancy pads seemed to thrust into him like spikes. Breathing deeply, he manipulated the massagers in his shock suit.

Just beyond Orbit Luna, Pell gradually swung the nose of the ship toward the nadir of the solar elliptic and the ship streaked out of the system. Turning up the detectors to full sensitivity, Pell tried to relax and sleep—because sleep was actually the only thing to do under tremendous accelerations.

Painfully Pell awoke. He let his eyes flicker over the instruments and nodded with satisfaction as he saw that the ship's velocity had reached 400 miles per second. Stiffly he cut the converter to one G and locked in the robot controls. Instantly the tremendous weight was removed from his body. He shrugged out of his shock suit with every bone in his body aching in discord.

When he had clambered through the narrow passage-way to the waist he saw that Gret was likewise divesting herself of the cumbersome garment.

"We're pushing 400 a second now," he reported. "In another 20 hours we can drop into hyper-space. How's it going back here?"

Gret indicated Heintz who seemed to be asleep. But the ragged gasps of his breathing belied this; Pell knew he was unconscious.

"He's been like this since blast-off—his heart, I believe," she stated matter-of-factly.

Pell frowned. "I was afraid of that. We'd better give him some amytal."

He rummaged around in the medical kit and brought out a hypo. He jabbed Heintz and eased him back into 

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