nearby the culinary crew pulled out
and put in operating condition the emergency feeding equipment.

The big wheel's soft, susurrus lullaby had already changed to a muted
background roar as her huge pumps drew the shielding waters of the rim
into the great tanks that gave the hub twenty-four feet of shielding
from the expected storm of protons that would soon be raging in the
vacuum outside.

The ship was withdrawing the hydraulic mass from its rim much as a
person in shock draws body fluids in from the outer limbs to the
central body cavities. The analogy was apt, for until danger passed,
the lab was knocked out, only its automatic functions proceeding as
normal, while its consciousness hovered in interiorized,
self-protective withdrawal.

On the panel before Bessie the computer's projection of expected
events showed the wave-front of protons approaching the orbit of
Venus, and on the numerical panel directly below this display the
negative count of minutes continued to march before her as the
wave-front approached at half the speed of light.

The expected diminishment of X rays had not yet occurred. Normally,
there would be a space of time between their diminishment and the
arrival of the first wave of protons; but so far it had not happened.

Six minutes had passed, and the arriving personnel of Project Hot Rod
came in through the locks from the loading platform, diving through
the central tunnel over Bessie's head and on to the shielded tank
beyond.

Seven minutes; and from Biology lab came an excited voice. "I need
some help! I've lost a rabbit. I came back for the one I'd been
inoculating but he got away from me, and I can't corner him in this
no-gravity!"

Bessie wasn't sure what to say, but Captain Andersen spoke into his
intercom. "Dr. Lavalle," he said in a low voice, but with the force of
command, "ninety per cent of your shielding has already been
withdrawn. Abandon the rabbit and report immediately to the hub!"

The pumps were still laboring to bring in the last nine per cent of
the water that would be brought. The remaining one per cent of the
normal hydraulic mass of the rim had been diverted to a very
small-diameter tube at the extreme inner portion of the rim, and was
now being driven through this tube at frantically higher velocities to
compensate for the removal of the major mass, and to maintain a small
percentage of the original spin, so that the hub would not be totally
in free fall, tho