The next half hour was a trying one. Two men had been killed outright, and another died before we could do anything to save him. Every man in the crew was shaken up and bruised, but by the time the check was completed, we had a good half of our personnel on duty.
Returning at last to the navigating room, I pressed the attention signal for Kincaide, and got his answer immediately.
“Located the trouble yet, Mr. Kincaide?” I asked anxiously.
“Yes, sir! Mr. Hendricks has been working with a group of men and has just made his report. They are ready when you are.”
“Good!” I drew a sigh of relief. It had been easier than I thought. Pressing the general attention signal, I broadcasted the warning, giving particular instructions to the men in charge of the injured. Then I issued orders to Hendricks:
“Reverse the current in five seconds, Mr. Hendricks, and stand by for further instructions.”
Hastily, then, Correy and I followed the orders we had given the men. Briefly we stood on our heads against the wall, feeling very foolish, and dreading the fall we knew was coming.
It came. We slid down the wall and lit heavily on our feet, while the litter that had been on the ceiling with us fell all around us. Miraculously, the ship seemed to have righted herself. Correy and I picked ourselves up and looked around.
“We’re still operating smoothly,” I commented with a sweeping glance at the instruments over the operating table. “Everything seems in order.”
“Did you notice the speed indicator, sir?” asked Correy grimly. “When he fell, one of the men in the operating room must have pulled the speed lever all the way over. We’re at maximum space speed, sir, and have been for nearly an hour, with no one at the controls.”
We stared at each other dully. Nearly an hour, at maximum space speed—a speed seldom used except in case of great emergency. With no one at the controls, and the ship set at maximum deflection from her course.
That meant that for nearly an hour we had been sweeping into infinite space in a great arc, at a speed I disliked to think about.
“I’ll work out our position at once,” I said, “and in the meantime, reduce speed to normal as quickly as possible. We must get back on our course at the earliest possible moment.”
We hurried across to the charts that were our most important aides in proper navigation. By comparing the groups of stars there with our space charts of the universe, the working out of our position was ordinarily, a simple matter.
But now, instead of milky rectangles, ruled with fine black lines, with a fiery red speck in the center and the bodies of the universe grouped around in green points of light, there were only nearly blank rectangles, shot through with vague, flickering lights that revealed nothing except the presence of disaster.
“The meteoric fragment wiped out some of our plates, I imagine,” said Correy slowly. “The thing’s useless.”
I nodded, staring down at the crawling lights on the charts.
“We’ll have to set down for repairs, Mr. Correy. If,” I added, “we can find a place.”
Correy glanced up at the attraction meter.
“I’ll take a look in the big disc,” he suggested. “There’s a sizeable body off to port. Perhaps our luck’s changed.”
He bent his head under the big hood, adjusting the controls until he located the source of the registered attraction.
“Right!” he said, after a moment’s careful scrutiny. “She’s as big as Earth, I’d venture, and I believe I can detect clouds, so there should be atmosphere. Shall we try it, sir?”
“Yes. We’re helpless until we make repairs. As big as Earth, you said? Is she familiar?”
Correy studied the image under the hood again, long and carefully.
“No, sir,” he said, looking up and shaking his head. “She’s a new one on me.”
Conning the ship first by means of the television disc, and navigating visually as we neared the strange sphere, we were soon close enough to make out the physical characteristics of this unknown world.
Our spectroscopic tests had revealed the presence of atmosphere suitable for breathing, although strongly laden with mineral fumes which, while possibly objectionable, would probably not be dangerous.
So far as we could see, there was but one continent, somewhat north of the equator, roughly triangular in shape, with its northernmost point reaching nearly to the Pole.
“It’s an unexplored world, sir. I’m certain of that,” said Correy. “I am sure I would have remembered that single, triangular continent had I seen it on any of our charts.” In those days, of course, the Universe was by no means so well mapped as it is today.
“If not unknown, it is at least uncharted,” I replied. “Rough looking country, isn’t it? No sign of life, either, that the disc will reveal.”
“That’s as well, sir. Better no people than wild natives who might interfere with our work. Any choice in the matter of a spot on which to set her down?”
I inspected the great, triangular continent carefully. Towards the north it was a mass of snow covered mountains, some of them, from their craters, dead volcanoes. Long spurs of these ranges reached southward, with green and apparently fertile valleys between. The southern edge was covered with dense tropical vegetation; a veritable jungle.
“At the base of that central spur there seems to be a sort of plateau,” I suggested. “I believe that would be a likely spot.”
“Very well, sir,” replied Correy, and the old Ertak, reduced to atmospheric speed, swiftly swept toward the indicated position, while Correy kept a wary eye on the surface temperature gauge, and I swept the terrain for any sign of intelligent life.
I found a number of trails, particularly around the base of the foothills, but they were evidently game trails, for there were no dwelling places of any kind; no cities, no villages, not even a single habitation of any kind that the searching eyes of the disc could detect.
Correy set her down as neatly and as softly as a rose petal drifts to the ground. Roses, I may add, are a beautiful and delicate flower, with very soft petals, peculiar to my native Earth.
We opened the main exit immediately. I watched the huge, circular door back slowly out of its threads, and finally swing aside, swiftly and silently, in the grip of its mighty gimbals, with the weird, unearthly feeling I have always had when about to step foot on some strange star where no man has trod before.
The air was sweet, and delightfully fresh after being cooped up for weeks in the Ertak, with her machine- made air. A little thinner, I should judge, than the air to which we were accustomed, but strangely exhilarating, and laden with a faint scent of some unknown constituent—undoubtedly the mineral element our spectroscope had revealed but not identified. Gravity, I found upon passing through the exit, was normal. Altogether an extremely satisfactory repair station.
Correy’s guess as to what had happened proved absolutely accurate. Along the top of the Ertak, from amidships to within a few feet of her pointed stem, was a jagged groove that had destroyed hundreds of the bright, coppery discs, set into the outer skin of the ship, that operated our super-radio reflex charts. The groove was so deep, in places, that it must have bent the outer skin of the Ertak down against the inner skin. A foot or more—it was best not to think of what would have happened then.
By the time we completed our inspection dusk was upon us—a long, lingering dusk, due, no doubt, to the afterglow resulting from the mineral content of the air. I’m no white-skinned, stoop-shouldered laboratory man, so I’m not sure that was the real reason. It sounds logical, however.
“Mr. Correy, I think we shall break out our field equipment and give all men not on watch an opportunity to sleep out in the fresh air,” I said. “Will you give the orders, please?”
