tment was there. They were crumpled against
it.

Hargraves winced with pain. He should have ordered everyone into space
suits. The instant Nielson reported the approach of the sphere,
Hargraves should have shouted, "Space suits" into the mike. He hadn't.

The receiver in his space suit crisped with sound.

"Jed! Have you got into that engine room yet? For cripes sake, Jed,
we're falling."

That was Nielson, on the bridge. He sounded frantic.

Sixteen feet the first second, then thirty-two, then sixty-four. They
had miles to fall, but their rate of fall progressed geometrically. They
had spent many minutes fighting their way through the air tight doors.
One hundred and twenty-eight feet the fourth second. Jed's mind was
racing.

No, by thunder, that was acceleration under an earth gravity. They
didn't know the gravity here. It might be less.

It might be more.

Ron Val had run forward and was kneeling beside Sarkoff.

"Let them go," Hargraves said roughly. "Ron Val, you check the drivers.
You--" Swiftly he assigned them tasks, reserving the control panel for
himself.

* * * * *

They were specialists. Noble, the blond youth, frantically examining the
atomics, was a bio-chemist. Ushur, the powerfully built man who had
stood at Ron Val's right hand on the negatron, was an archeologist.

They were engineers now. They had to be.

"Nothing seems to be wrong here." That was Ron Val, from the drivers.

"The atomics are working." That was Noble reporting.

"Then what the hell is wrong?" At the control panel, Hargraves saw what
was wrong. The damned controls were automatic, with temperature and air
pressure cut-offs. When the air had gone from the engine room, that
meant something was wrong. The controls had automatically cut off the
drivers. The ship had stopped moving.

A manual control was provided. Hargraves shoved the switch home. An
oil-immersed control thudded. The loafing giants grunted as the lash
struck them, roared with pain as they got hastily to work on their
treadmill.

The ship moved forward.

"We're moving!" That was Red Nielson shouting. The controls on the
bridge were responding now. "I'm going to burn a hole in space getting
us away from here."

"No!" said Hargraves.

"What?" There was incredulous doubt in Nielson's voice. "That damned
sphere came from this planet."

"Can't help it. We've got to land."

"Land here, now!"

"There's a hole as big as t