unlike him to be
incautious; yet now with no thought save that some unforeseen and
pleasing circumstance had brought the _Planetara_ ahead of time;
incautious Grantline certainly was.

"Raise the ore-barrage."

"I'll go! My suit is here."

* * * * *

A willing volunteer rushed out to the ore-shed. The Gamma rays, which in
the helio-room of the _Planetara_ came so unwelcome to Snap and me, were
loosed.

"Can you send, Peter?" Grantline demanded.

"Yes, with more power."

"Use it."

Johnny dictated the message of his location which we received. In his
incautious excitement he ignored the secret code.

An interval passed. The ore was occulted again. No message had come from
us--just Snap's routine signal in the weak infra-red, which we hoped
Grantline would not get.

The men crowding Grantline's instrument room waited in tense silence.
Then Grantline tried the telescope. Its current weakened the lights with
the drain upon the distributors, and cooled the room with a sudden
deadly chill as the Erentz insulating system slowed down.

The duty man looked suddenly frightened. "You'll bulge out our walls,
Commander. The internal pressure--"

"We'll chance it."

They picked up the image of the _Planetara_! It came from the telescope
and shone clear on the grid--the segment of star-field with a tiny,
cigar-shaped blob. Clear enough to be unmistakable. The _Planetara_!
Here now over the Moon, almost directly overhead, poised at what the
altimeter scale showed to be a fraction under thirty thousand miles.

The men gazed in awed silence. The _Planetara_ coming....

But the altimeter needle was motionless. The _Planetara_ was hanging
poised.

A sudden gasp went about the room. The men stood with whitening faces,
gazing at the _Planetara's_ image. And at the altimeter needle. It was
moving. The _Planetara_ was descending. But not with an orderly swoop.

The image showed the ship clearly. The bow tilted up, then dipped down.
But then in a moment it swung up again. The ship turned partly over.
Righted itself. Then swayed again, drunkenly.

The watching men were stricken into horrified silence. The _Planetara's_
image momentarily, horribly, grew larger. Swaying. Then turning
completely over, rotating slowly end over end.

The _Planetara_, out of control, was falling!

CHAPTER XXI

_The Wreck of the_ Planetara

On the _Planetara_, in the helio-room, Snap and I stood with