ached a decision the argument stopped. He was one
of the crew, and the crew knew it. The crew was one with him, and he
knew it.

He might question Nielson's facts, once, in surprise. But not twice. If
Nielson said a ship was approaching, a ship _was_ approaching.

* * * * *

"I'm coming," Hargraves rapped into the mike. "Turn full power into the
defense screen. Warn the engine room to be ready for an emergency. Sound
the call to stations. And Red, hold us away from this planet."

Almost before he had finished speaking, a siren was wailing through the
ship. Although he had used the microphone in the nook that housed the
telescope, Ron Val had been so interested in the world they were
approaching that he had not heard the captain's orders. He heard the
siren.

"What is it, Jed?"

Hargraves didn't have time to explain. He was diving out the door and
racing toward the bridge in the nose of the ship. "Come on," he flung
back over his shoulder at Ron Val. "Your post is at the fore negatron."

Ron Val took one despairing glance at his telescope, then followed the
commander.

As he ran toward the control room, Hargraves heard the ship begin to
radiate a new tempo of sound. The siren was dying into silence, its
warning task finished. Other sounds were taking its place. From the
engine room in the stern was coming a spiteful hiss, like steam escaping
under great pressure from a tiny vent valve. That was the twin atomics,
loading up, building up the inconceivable pressures they would feed to
the Kruchek drivers. A slight rumble went through the ship, a rumble
seemingly radiated from every molecule, from every atom, in the vessel.
It _was_ radiated from every molecule! That rumble came from the Kruchek
drivers warping the ship in response to the controls on the bridge. Bill
Kruchek's going-faster-than-hell engines, engineers called them. A
fellow by the name of Bill Kruchek had invented them. When Bill
Krucheck's going-faster-than-hell drivers dug their toes into the
lattice of space and put brawny shoulders behind every molecule within
the field they generated, a ship within that field went faster than
light. The Kruchek drivers, given the juice they needed in such
tremendous quantities, took you from hell to yonder in a mighty hurry.
They had been idling, drifting the ship slowly in toward the planet.
Now, in response to an impulse from Nielson on the bridge, they
grumbled, and hunching mi