closely approximating the escape velocity of the earth—6.9 miles a second. This would enable the ship to soar over the earth until it was over a good sized city, where the message from Outpost 53 would be dropped.

"But if we land at that speed—and gravity will see to it we don't hit much slower—we'll be buried deep in the ground. Even if we hit the ocean, the deceleration will kill us—"

"Would it? There have been records of meteors striking the ground so lightly they did little more than raise a cloud of dust."

"We're not a meteor."

"We're practically a meteor and there's one chance in a million that we can duplicate what a meteor can do, Bill. It's our only chance."

"What do you want me to do?"

Rocket engineers in developing machines for space travel had found speed the foremost bugaboo. It was the speed a rocket had to attain to leave terrestrial gravity that balked engineers. There also was man's instinctive fear of going fast, in spite of the assurances of science that speed, in itself, was harmless. It was acceleration and deceleration that killed people.

One might travel seven miles a second indefinitely and suffer no ill effects, once he got going that rate of speed. However, one might die quickly while attaining it. Drugs enabled spacemen to withstand several gravities of acceleration or deceleration without fatal effects and there were a few of these pills aboard. But any speed change greater than nine or ten gravities would be dangerous under any conditions.

The craft neared the earth. Already the travelers could make out the dim outlines of the continental areas.

The gravity gauge registered the earth's pull strongly and Captain Bonnet calculated that they were nearing the outer limits of the atmosphere. He twisted a valve a fraction of a turn.

From a steering jet, a tiny needle of flame shot into the ether. From another jet, a second flame glowed for an instant. The space ship turned, wheeling the onrushing earth out of line with the lifeboat's prow. Now the huge, radiant ball peeked into the craft through the glass window in the floor, but the ship's direction of travel continued toward it as before.

Captain Bonnet shut off the valves, conserving every ounce of rocket fuel that remained in the tanks. Lieutenant Riley started the cooling mechanism 

 Prev. P 7/12 next