I didn’t try to get up immediately. I waited for the deck to stop gyrating and the strength to return to my wrists. My right arm was numb and tingling. When I raised my hands I could see the bones in my fingers. All pilots have skeleton hands when they take off. It’s a second-order cathode ray effect which vanishes after a minute or two. It doesn’t mean a thing. Not if you’re sound of mind and limb, and the ship you’ve picked is spaceworthy.
But Pete seemed to take a different view. He was staring at me in horror. I knew what he was thinking. If I was pinch-hitting for Death—I’d got off to a good start.
He, too, was on his knees on the deck, his shoulders swaying, his face turned toward me in bitter reproach.
Suddenly his eyes blazed with anger. “Son, I ought to get up and bust you one on the jaw! If you’d warned me, I could have braced myself!”
I hadn’t thought of that. But before I could tell him how sorry I felt, he was chuckling!
“It’s all right, Jim! No bones broken! She sure took it beautifully, eh?”
“She sure did!” I muttered.
I watched him get to his feet and go reeling toward the viewpane. Mr. Chameleon was the name for him! He could change his moods so fast, his mental outlook must have been as dazzling as a display of fireworks.
A guy like that just couldn’t hold a grudge. If you poked him in the ribs he’d blacken your eye and give you his last ounce of tobacco. Good old Pete! Insatiably curious he was too, like a little boy at a circus side show.
He just couldn’t wait to see how far up we were, had to look out the viewpane before his brain stopped spinning.
I was satisfied just to sit on the deck and watch him.
For an instant he stared out, his face pressed to the pane, the pulse in his forehead swelling visibly.
Then, abruptly, he turned and flashed me a startled look. “Jehoshaphat, Jim! We—we can’t be travelin’ that fast! Callisto’s just a little crawlin’ red gnat in the middle o’ the sky!”
II
Planet Shift
I stared at him uneasily. He was talking like an idiot. I knew that Jupiter itself would have to dwindle to a small disk before Callisto could become a pin point of light. When you take off from a little moon the glare of its primary magnifies its surface features. For about one hour Callisto would look like a black orchid dwindling in a blaze of light. Then it would whip away into emptiness to reappear as a glowing dot.
“Jupiter looks funny too!” Pete muttered. “Mighty funny! Like a big slice o’ yellow cheese with golden bands around it, spreadin’ out—”
That did it! I got up and walked to the viewpane, slapping my hands together explosively. I had to let off steam in some way. My steadiness surprised me. My eyelids felt a little heavy, but there was nothing wrong with my space legs.
When I started out I didn’t see the red gnat. But I saw something else, something that gave me a tremendous shock. What I saw was a great ringed planet swimming in a golden haze!
When I turned my face must have given Pete a jolt. He gulped so hard I was afraid he’d swallow his Adam’s apple and choke on the rind.
“What is it, Jim?” he asked huskily. “You look like you’d seen a ghost!”
I laughed without amusement. “I did! A ghost planet! And we’re not moving away from it! It’s getting larger!”
Pete stared. “Sure you feel okay, son?”
“Not too good!” I said, looking him straight in the eye. “Take another look!”
I gestured toward the viewpane. “Go on! See for yourself!”
Pete stood for a long time with his face pressed to the pane, his shoulders hunched. I thought he was never going to turn.
A crazy thought flashed through my mind. I’d seen men in a state of collapse on their feet, their faces blanched, unable to move or speak. Had Pete been shocked speechless?
I was sweating as he turned. His face was blanched, all right, but he could speak, and did!
“I’ve got to sit down, Jim!” he choked out.
He reeled to the bulkhead chronometer, sat down and started tugging at his chin. After a moment he whipped his hand from his face.
“You’re an educated man, Jim,” he said. “I’m not! If you tell me we’re headin’ straight for Saturn, I won’t call you a liar!”
“You won’t?”
“No, Jim. Say a guy brings you a watch. The hands go in the wrong direction, the tickin’s so loud it drives you nuts. ‘Buddy,’ he says, ‘if you want to know what time it isn’t, this watch will tell you.’
“Well, say you’ve got to know the time, say your life depends on it. What do you do, Jim? Lift him up by his seat and toss him out the door? Shucks, no! You listen while he talks. You ask him to take the watch apart and show you what makes it tick.”
“Fine!” I said. “So I’m the man with the watch! I put Saturn outside the viewpane just to torture you!”
He looked so miserable I felt sorry for him. “I didn’t mean it that way, Jim,” he apologized. “But I’m plumb scared! Somethin’s happenin’ to space! Somethin’ ghastly awful! You must have some idea what’s causin’ it!”
“Don’t kid yourself!” I told him. “A wild guess isn’t an idea.”
“Let me be the judge o’ that, son!”
“Well—all right. Maybe we’re seeing Saturn as a magnified image—through some kind of magnifying space drift. A big, floating lens in space, made up of refractive particles spread out in a
