he ship itself, responded to the full mosquito-sized
strength of the six hundred forty pound thrust, and was moved--a
fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a centimeter in the first
second; a fraction of a fraction in the second; a fraction....

* * * * *

On the bridge, the com officer had completed transmitting the
captain's detailed report of the evacuation to the hub-shield area
caused by the solar flare.

On another line, under Bessie's ministrations, the computer was
feeding the data obtained by the incomplete equipment in the
observatory in its automatic operation.

The captain himself was finishing a plastic-bottle of coffee, while he
wrote up his log.

It was exactly nine minutes since the Confusor had come into full
operation.

The fractions of fractions of centimeters had added on the square of
the number of seconds; and the sixty-four million pounds of mass of
Space Lab One has moved over thirteen meters.

Trailing the wheel ten miles off, was the atomic pile, directly
attached to its anchor tube.

Tightening, each with a whanging snap too tiny to be remarked within
the mass of the ship, were the cables that attached the various items
of the dump to their anchor finger.

But still free on the loose one hundred meter cable that attached it
to its anchor, and which had had fifteen meters of slack when the
ship first began its infinitesimal movement, was Project Hot Rod.

Nine minutes and twenty-three seconds. The velocity of the wheel with
its increasing mass of trailing items, was five point four six
centimeters per second. The nearly four million pound mass of Hot Rod
was slowly being left behind.

The cable tautened the final fraction of a centimeter. Its tug was not
fast, but was unfortunately applied very close to the center of
gravity of the entire device, since most of Hot Rod's weight was
concentrated in and around the control room.

Five point four six centimeters per second. Four million pounds of
mass.

If the shock had been direct, it would have equaled two point eight
million ergs of energy, created by the fractional movement of the
mighty mass of the ship against Hot Rod.

But the shock was transmitted through the short end of a long lever.
The motion at the beam director mirror, a full diameter out from the
eight thousand foot diameter balloon that was Hot Rod, was multiplied
nearly sixteen thousand times. Hot Rod rolled on its center of
gravi