The look-out in the forward tower was clinging to his window. On the
deck below our turret a member of the crew appeared, stood lurching for
a moment, then shouted, and turned and ran, swaying, aimless. From the
lower hull-corridors our grids sounded with the tramping of running
steps. Panic among the crew was spreading over the ship. A chaos below
decks.

* * * * *

I pulled at the emergency switch again. Dead....

But down below there was the manual controls.

"Snap, we must get down. The signals."

"Yes."

Coniston's voice came like a scream from the grid. "Hahn is dead--the
controls are broken! Hahn is dead!"

We barely heard him. I shouted, "Miko--hold Anita! Come on, Snap!"

We clung to the ladders. Snap was behind me. "Careful, Gregg! Good God!"

This dizzying whirl. I tried not to look. The deck under me was now a
blurred kaleidoscope of swinging patches of moonlight and shadow.

We reached the deck. Ran, swaying, lurching.

It seemed that from the turret Anita's voice followed us. "Be careful!"

Within the ship our senses steadied. With the rotating, reeling, heavens
shut out, there were only the shouts and tramping steps of the
panic-stricken crew to mark that anything was amiss. That, and a
pseudo-sensation of lurching caused by the pulsing of gravity--a pull
when the Moon was beneath our hull to combine its force with our
magnetizers; a lightening when it was overhead. A throbbing, pendulum
lurch--that was all.

We ran down to the corridor incline. A white-faced member of the crew,
came running up.

"What's happened? Haljan, what's happened?"

"We're falling!" I gripped him. "Get below. Come on with us!"

But he jerked away from me. "Falling?"

A steward came running. "Falling? My God!"

Snap swung at them. "Get ahead of us! The manual controls--our only
chance--we need all you men at the compressor pumps!"

But it was an instinct to try and get on deck, as though here below we
were rats caught in a trap. The men tore away from me and ran. Their
shouts of panic resounded through the dim, blue-lit corridors.

* * * * *

Coniston came lurching from the control room. "I say--falling! Haljan,
my God, look at him!"

Hahn was sprawled at the gravity-plate switchboard. Sprawled,
head-down. Dead. Killed by something? Or a suicide?

I bent over him. His hands gripped the main switch. He had ripped it
loose. And his left han