you  out  of  this hydrogen tomb  just  as  he pulled you out  of
Golconda's black sands and  rotten swamps.  That's what Dauge thinks anyhow.
But Alexei won't. Or will he?
     In the sick bay, breathing through nostrils extended with pain, Mollard
was  smearing himself with thick tannic  ointment.  His  face and arms  were
lobster-red and  shiny. Catching sight of Bykov he smiled amiably and struck
up his song  about the swallows. He was  almost calm now. Had he not started
his song  Bykov would have been sure  he  was really  calm. But  Mollard was
singing in  a voice  that  was  over-loud  and deliberate, hissing with pain
every now and then.


     3.  The engineer reminisces  while the  navigator advises  shutting off
memory.

     Zhilin was  repairing  the reflector control combine.  It was  hot  and
stuffy and he thought the ship's air conditioners  must have broken down but
he had no  time or wish to  see to them. At  first he  threw off his jacket,
then his overalls, and remained in shorts and shirt. Varya settled  promptly
on the discarded overalls and  soon was invisible, save  for her  shadow and
her prominent eyes, which flashed into presence sometimes.
     Zhilin  was  getting  out  of  the  torn  casing  plastic-metal printed
circuits, sounding the good ones,  putting aside those that were cracked and
replacing them by  spares. He  worked  steadily and unhurriedly as  during a
repairs test,  because  he had all the time  he needed and because anyway it
would probably be to no purpose. He  tried not to think  of anything and was
happy  he  remembered  the  general  scheme  quite  well,  enough  to  avoid
consulting the servicing volume more  than a  couple of times, and that he'd
been knocked about  not so  badly after all and there were only scratches on
his head.  Behind  the photon reactor  casing  the  computer buzzed, Mikhail
Antonovich  rustled  paper and hummed to  himself  something unmelodious. He
always hummed something to himself when working.
     I  wonder  what's  he doing  now, thought Zhilin. Or  perhaps he's just
trying to keep  his  mind busy. It's  great to be able to pick up work at  a
time like  this.  The  planetologists  are  also  working  now  most likely,
dropping bomb-probes. So I haven't seen  a stick of probes go off after all.
Or a lot of other things  either, for  that matter. They  say, for instance,
Jupe's a smashing sight  from Amaltheia.  And I always  wanted to go  on  an
astral trip or a pathfinder expedition to another planet to search for signs
of  beings from outer worlds. And then they said there were some  nice girls
on the J-stations and I wanted to meet them  to have something to brag about
to Perez Junto-he's been assigned to lunar routes and is happy about it too,
rum  sort  as  he  is.  Funny the way Mikhail Antonovich is  singing  out of
tune-as if on purpose. He's married and has two children, no, three, and the
eldest, a girl, is sixteen;  he's been promising to introduce me and winking
raffishly every time, but that is not to happen. Nor a lot of other things.
     Father will be  terribly upset-that's  bad. Just my rotten luck that it
should have happened on my first independent trip. It's a good thing she and
I have drifted apart, it suddenly occurred to him.  Altogether  easier. It's
much harder, say, for Mikhail Antonovich. Or for the  captain. The captain's
wife's beautiful and clever, likes a laugh, too. When she was seeing him off
she didn't seem  worried  at all, or perhaps she was,  but  didn't show  it,
though I  rather thought she  wasn't, being  used to it.  You  get  used  to
anything. I for one got used to  acceleration, though at first felt suicidal
and even expected they'd transfer  me to the  Ground  Control Department. It
was called  "joining  the girls", the Department  being mostly  female,  and
considered a disgrace. Nobody was quite sure why though, for the  girls were
good company and later worked at the various Spu's and stations and bases on
other planets, giving  a  very good account of themselves. Better than  boys
sometimes. Anyway, thought Zhilin, it's a  good  thing we've drifted  apart.
Just imagine what she'd be thinking now. And he stared  meaninglessly at the
cracked circuit he was holding in his hand.
     We kissed in the Bolshoi  Park  and  then on the embankment under  some
white statues, and then I saw  her home and we kissed  more  in the entrance
hall  of  her block of flats and people kept going  up and down all the time
despite the late hour. She was afraid her mother might appear any moment and
ask  her  what she thought she  was doing there and who that young man  was.
That was  in  summer, during  the  white nights.  Then I came for my  winter
vacation and we  met again, and  it was like that first time, only there was
snow  in the park and bare branches  stirred in the  grey low  sky. Her lips
were  soft  and warm and I  remember I told  her  I found  kissing more of a
winter occupation. Gusts  of wind  showered  snow on us until we  felt quite
frozen and ran for warmth and shelter to a cafe in the Street of Spacemen. I
remember how happy  we  were  to  find it empty. We settled at  a window and
watched the cars sweep by outside. I betted her I knew all the car makes and
lost:  a flash low-seated job pulled up at the kerb which I couldn't name. I
went outside to enquire and was told it was a Golden Dragon, the new Chinese
atom-powered car. The stake was three wishes for the winner. It seemed  then
that  it  would  be  like this  always,  in winter  and  in  summer,  on the
embankment  under the white  statues and  in  the  Bolshoi Park, and  in the
theatre where she looked breathtakingly beautiful in her  black dress with a
white  collar and was  nudging me  all the time so I wouldn't laugh so loud.
But one  day she didn't turn  up and I made  another date by videophone. And
she didn't come again, and she didn't answer my letters when I went  back to
the School. I still wouldn't  take it. I kept  sending her  long and foolish
letters,  though I didn't know at the time they were foolish. A year later I
saw her  in our club. She was with another girl and  didn't recognise me.  I
felt then life was over for me, but it wore off by  the end of my fifth year
and I  can't even understand why  I  should  be  remembering all  this  now.
Probably because it  doesn't matter any longer. Yes, I think I wouldn't want
to be reminiscing otherwise. ...
     The hatch clanged. Bykov's voice said:
     "How're things, Mikhail?"
     "Finishing the first spiral, Alexei. Dropped three hundred miles."
     "Well..." Zhilin heard somebody kick plastic fragments along the floor.
"And of course no communication with Amaltheia?"
     "The  receiver's  dead,"  said  Mikhail  Antonovich  and  sighed.  "The
transmitter's working but there are such radio storms here...."
     "What about your calculations?"
     "Almost finished. We'll drop something  in the  order  of four thousand
miles and then hang, it appears. Floating, as Vladimir says. The pressure'll
be terrific but not  big enough to  crush us-that's clear.  It  will be  big
enough, however, to make it  hard for us, with a load of  anything up to 2.5
G's."
     "Hm," said Bykov. For a while  he was silent, then said, "Have you  got
any idea?"
     "Pardon?"
     "I say, have you got any idea-how to get out of it?"
     "Why, no, old chap," the navigator said gently, almost  ingratiatingly.
"How could I. It's Jupiter.  Why, I have never even heard about anybody ever
... getting out of here."
     A  long silence  descended. Zhilin began  working  again,  quickly  and
noiselessly. Then Mikhail Antonovich said in a rush:
     "You  stop  thinking  about her, old chap. Much  better  not to, or you
start feeling so rotten, really...."
     "But I'm not,"  Bykov  said in  a  grating voice.  "And you'd  be  well
advised not to. Ivan!" he yelled.
     "Here," Zhilin called back and started working urgently. "Still at it?"
"Finishing soon," he said.
     He heard the  captain  coming across to him, kicking  plastic fragments
out of his path.
     "Litter everywhere," Bykov was muttering. "A real pigsty."  -He emerged
from behind the casing and squatted beside Zhilin.
     "I'm finishing," Zhilin repeated. "Taking  your  time  about it, aren't
you," Bykov growled.
     He grunted and  started emptying the  spare blocks out of the kit on to
the floor. Zhilin shifted a little to make more room for him. They were both
big and broad, and there was really not quite enough elbow-room for  both of
them in the space in front of the combine. They worked silently and rapidly,
and soon heard Mikhail Antonovich start his  computer again and  then  begin
humming to himself.
     When they were through Bykov called out:
     "Mikhail, come here, will you."
     " He straightened up and wiped sweat off his forehead. Then  he  kicked
aside the heap of Cracked circuits and  switched on the general control. The
3D reflector scheme appeared on the screen. It  was revolving slowly. "Well,
well, well," said Mikhail Antonovich.
     A blue graph started tick-tick-tick, unreeling slowly.
     "Not too many microholes," Zhilin said quietly. "Microholes be hanged,"
Bykov  said,  made  an ugly face and bent close to the screen. "Look at this
bastard."
     The reflector scheme was tinted blue. Now this blue was  showing ragged
patches of white. Those were the spots where either the mesosubstance layers
were pierced or control cells smashed. There were plenty of white spots, and
to  one  side of the reflector they ran into a big blotch of white taking up
at least one-eighth of the paraboloid's surface.
     "Just  look  at  this  bastard,"  Bykov repeated and thrust  his  thumb
between his teeth. He was thinking.
     Mikhail Antonovich shook his head and went back to his computer.
     "The thing's only  good for fireworks now," Zhilin muttered. He reached
for his overalls, shook Varya out and pulled them on: it had got cold again.
Bykov  was  still  standing  looking  at the  screen and biting  at  a nail.
Presently he picked up the blue graph and ran a cursory eye over it.
     "Zhilin,"  he  suddenly  said in  a  tense  voice.  "Get  a  couple  of
sigma-testers, check them  and go  to  the air-lock. I'll be waiting for you
there.
     Mikhail, drop everything  and start reinforcing the holes.  I said drop
everything." "Where're you going, old chap?" Mikhail
     Antonovich asked in surprise.
     "Outside," Bykov said and went  out. "But what for?" Mikhail Antonovich
asked, turning to Zhilin.
     Zhilin shrugged. He didn't know what for. Repairing  a mirror in  space
and in  flight,  without mesochemists, without  huge crystallisers,  without
reactor  furnaces,  was  absolutely impossible. As absolutely impossible as,
say, pulling the Moon to the Earth with your bare hands. And as it was, with
a corner smashed, the reflector could only impart a spinning movement to the
ship. Just what it did when the thing had happened.
     "Makes no sense," Zhilin said uncertainly.
     He  looked at  Mikhail Antonovich and Mikhail Antonovich looked at him.
They  never said  a word but all of a sudden were both in a terrible  hurry.
Fussily Mikhail Antonovich gathered up his sheets, saying urgently:
     "You go, Vanya. You go quickly."
     In the air-lock Bykov and Zhilin got into space suits and then squeezed
themselves into  the  lift.  The cab raced  along the  gigantic tube of  the
photon reactor  which stringed all the ship's  compartments-from the  living
quarters down to the parabolic reflector.
     "Good," said Bykov.
     "What's good?" asked Zhilin.
     The lift stopped.
     "It's good the lift's in order," said Bykov.
     "Ah." Zhilin was disappointed.
     "It might  have been out of order," Bykov  said sternly. "You'd have to
crawl all of seven hundred feet there and then back."
     They stepped out on to the upper platform of the  paraboloid. The black
ribbed dome of the reflector sloped in a curve from under their feet. It was
enormous:  700 yards in length and 500  yards in  diameter. From where  they
stood they could not  see its edges. Poised over their  heads  was the  huge
silver disc of the  cargo bay. On its sides, slung  far out on  brackets the
hydrogen engines  shot  out silent  furious  blue  flames. An awesome  world
gleamed eerily round them.
     A bank of  carroty fog stretched on their  left.  Far down,  incredibly
deep  underfoot,  the fog  lay-in fat  layers of  cloud with darker  gaps in
between. Still farther and  deeper, the  clouds ran  together  into  a dense
brown  expanse. On  their  right all was enveloped  in an even  pink haze in
which Zhilin saw suddenly the Sun-a small bright pink disc.
     "Take  this," said Bykov. He  thrust a coil of thin cable into Zhilin's
hands. "Make it fast in the lift shaft, will you," he said.
     He  made a noose with the other end of the  cable and fastened it round
his waist. Then he slung both testers round his neck and swung his legs over
the railing.
     "You pay it out," he said. "Here goes."
     Zhilin  stood against the railing, gripping the  cable  with both hands
and  watching  the  thick  awkward  figure in  a bright  space  suit  slowly
disappear beyond the curvature of the dome. The suit gleamed pinkish and the
ribbed dome sent off pinkish reflections too.
     "Pay  it  out  livelier,"  Bykov's angry voice  boomed inside  Zhilin's
helmet.
     The space-suited figure crawled  out of  sight and  there was  only the
bright taut  line of the cable on the ribbed surface now.  Zhilin glanced at
the Sun. It was veiled by haze now, sharply outlined  and almost red. Zhilin
looked down at his feet and saw his own blurred pinkish shadow.
     "Look, Ivan," Bykov's voice said. "Look down!"
     Zhilin  looked. Deep down, bulging  out  of the brown  expanse,  was  a
colossal whitish mass looking  like a monstrous  toadstool. It  was swelling
out  slowly and a  pattern  like a  bunch  of writhing  snakes could be seen
quivering on its surface.
     "An  exospheric protuberance," said  Bykov. "A rare  thing-as far  as I
know. A pity the boys aren't here to see it."
     He meant the planetologists. The mass was suddenly lighted  from within
with trembling lilac luminescence.
     "Whew, what a sight," Zhilin said involuntarily.
     "Pay it out," said Bykov.
     Zhilin  payed   out  more  cable  without  taking   his  eyes  off  the
protuberance. At first it seemed to him as though the ship was going to pass
through  it,  then he  realised it  would  be  far  on  the  starboard.  The
protuberance  tore  off  the brown  mass and sailed towards the  pink  haze,
trailing behind it  a tail of yellow  transparent filaments. Again  a  lilac
glow flickered on in them and died out. Presently the protuberance was  lost
in the pink haze.
     Bykov  worked for  a long  time. He would return  to the platform for a
short rest and then crawl in a  new direction.  When he climbed back for the
third time he had only one tester. "Dropped it," he said laconically. Zhilin
payed out the cable patiently, bracing his foot against the railing. He felt
quite secure  in this  position  and  could watch for  sights.  But  nothing
happened. Only when  the captain climbed up for the sixth time and muttered,
"That'll do," did he realise  that the  carroty wall  on the  left-Jupiter's
cloudy surface -was visibly nearer.
     It was clean and tidy in the control room. Mikhail Antonovich had swept
it out and was sitting  in his usual place, huddled in a fur jacket over his
overalls. It was so  cold in  the room that one could see his breath.  Bykov
sat down in  his chair, 'leaned forward, propping himself against his knees,
and looked closely first at the navigator, then at the engineer.
     "Have you plugged the holes tighter?" he asked the navigator.
     Mikhail  Antonovich nodded  several times. "We've  got  a chance," said
Bykov.  Mikhail  Antonovich  sat up  and  took in  a  noisy  breath.  Zhilin
swallowed. "We've got a chance," Bykov repeated. "A tiny chance. A fantastic
chance." "Go on, Alexei," the navigator begged. "It's like this," Bykov said
and cleared his throat. "Sixteen per cent  of the reflector surface is gone.
The question is: can we make  the other eighty-four per cent work? Less than
that in fact,  because another  ten  percent  or  so  is-uncontrollable, the
control cells being smashed."
     The navigator and engineer listened intently, craning their necks.
     "The answer is we can," said Bykov. "We can  try anyway. We  must shift
the  plasma burning  point  so as  to  compensate  asymmetry  in the damaged
reflector."
     "I see," Zhilin said in a trembling voice.
     Bykov threw him a glance.
     "That  is our only chance.  Ivan and  I are  going to  reorientate  the
magnetic  traps. I've seen Ivan in action. You, Misha, will calculate a  new
position for the burning point in accordance with the pattern of the damage.
You'll have that  pattern straight away. It's  a hell of a  lot of work, but
it's the only chance we've got."
     His eyes were full  on the navigator. Mikhail Antonovich looked  up and
their  glances met.  They understood  each other immediately and completely.
They understood  it  might be  too late. That down there, where pressure was
terrific,  corrosion  would eat  into  the  ship's  hull  so that she  might
dissolve like a lump of sugar in  boiling water before they  finished.  That
they couldn't  even hope to achieve  complete compensation. That  nobody had
ever attempted  before to steer ships with such a  compensation, the engines
at least one-third below rated power.... .
     "It's the only chance we've got," Bykov said loudly.
     "I'll do it, old chap," said Mikhail Antonovich. "It's not difficult to
calculate a new point. I'll do it."
     "I'll give  you the  pattern  of the  dead areas  straight away," Bykov
repeated. "And we must hurry  all we can.  Overgravity'1'1 soon be on us and
make all work a hundredfold harder. And if we fell too deep the reactor'd be
too  risky  to switch-might start  off a  chain  reaction  in the compressed
hydrogen..." he paused and said, "make gas out of us."
     "I see,"  said Zhilin.  He  felt  a  terrible urge to start  that  very
minute, at once. He liked very much that tiny fantastic chance.
     Mikhail Antonovich  stretched  out a stumpy hand  and said  in  a  thin
voice:
     "The pattern, give me the pattern, Alexei."
     On the emergency panel three red lights flashed' on.
     "There  you are,"  said Mikhail Antonovich. ''Fuel's running out in the
emergency engines."
     "Never mind," Bykov said and rose.


     CHAPTER THREE

     MEN IN THE ABYSS

     1. The planetologists play while the navigator is caught smuggling.

     "Load her," said Yurkovsky.
     He  was hanging at the periscope, his face thrust into the  suede frame
cover.  He was hanging  horizontally,  stomach down,  legs and elbows spread
wide, with the  thick log-book and  fountain-pen floating within easy reach.
Mollard slid the breech  open smartly, pulled  a case of  bomb-probes out of
the rack  and, pushing it this way and  that, forced it into the rectangular
slit of the  loading  chamber. The  case  slid slowly  and  noiselessly into
place. Mollard closed the breech, locked it and said:
     "Ready, Voldemar."
     Mollard was  bearing weightlessness very  well. Sometimes he  made rash
movements  and  hung  at the  ceiling  so that he had to be pulled back, and
sometimes he felt like being sick, but for a man experiencing weightlessness
for the first time in his life his performance was very creditable.
     "Ready," Dauge said at the exospheric spectre-graph.
     "Fire," ordered Yurkovsky.
     Dauge pressed the trigger.  They  heard  the  deep  doo-doo-doo  of the
breech, immediately  followed  by the tick-tick-tick of the spectrograph. In
the periscope Yurkovsky saw white balls of fire flare  up one after  another
and race  upwards  in  the orange fog  through  which  the <i>Tahmasib</i>  was now
falling. Twenty balls of  fire for twenty bomb-probes, each carrying a meson
emitter.
     "Lovely," Yurkovsky said quietly. Pressure was increasing  outside. The
bomb-probes were exploding closer and closer because of the greater drag.
     Dauge  was speaking into  the  dictaphone, glancing  at  the  reference
device of the spectroanalyser.
     "Molecular hydrogen-eighty-one point three five, helium-seven point one
one,  methane-four  point  one  six,  ammonia-one  point  zero  one....  The
unidentified line is increasing.... I  told them we should have an automatic
reader-it's so inconvenient...."
     "We're  falling,"  said  Yurkovsky.  "Just  look   how  we're  falling.
Methane's down to four already...."
     Dauge, turning adroitly,  was keeping up with the readings on the other
equipment.
     "So far Kangren's right,"  he  said.  "There. The bathometer's  dead-at
three hundred atmospheres. No more pressure readings."
     "Never mind," said Yurkovsky. "Load her."
     "Is it worth  it?"  said Dauge. "Without the bathometer synchronisation
will be faulty."
     "Let's try," said Yurkovsky. "Load her."
     He looked back at  Mollard. He was swaying against the ceiling, smiling
ruefully.
     "Pull him down, Grigory," said Yurkovsky.
     Dauge straightened  up, caught Mollard by his foot and pulled him down.
"Charles,"  he said patiently. "Try and  avoid rash  movements. Thrust  your
toes in here and hold fast."
     Mollard heaved a  sigh and slid the hatch open.  The spent case floated
out of  the chamber, hit him in  the chest and  rebounded towards Yurkovsky,
who dodged it.
     "Oh, again," Mollard said guiltily. "I am terribly sorry, Voldemar. Oh,
this weightlessness."
     "Go on, load her," said Yurkovsky.
     "The Sun," Dauge said suddenly.
     Yurkovsky plunged  his  face in the  periscope frame.  For  a  fleeting
moment he saw a reddish disc vague against the orange fog.
     "It's the last we'll see of it," Dauge said and coughed.
     "You  have said that three times," Mollard said, closing the breech and
bending  down to  make quite  sure  he'd done  a good  job of it. <i>"Adieu, le
soldi,</i> as Captain  Nemo  used to say.  But it turns out it was not the  last
time. I am ready, Voldemar."
     "So am I," said Dauge. "But shouldn't we really call it a day?"
     At that moment Bykov strode in to a loud clang of his magnetic boots.
     "Knock off," he said morosely.
     "But why?" Yurkovsky enquired, turning to him. .
     "Big pressure outside. Another half-hour and your bombs'll be exploding
in this bay."
     "Fire,"  Yurkovsky  said hastily.  Dauge  hesitated,  then  pulled  the
trigger. Bykov listened to the doo-doo-doo in the breech and said:
     "Enough's enough. Batten all  the instrument portholes. And  spike this
thing," he pointed at the bomb-release. "Spike it good and proper."
     "Are periscopic observations still allowed?" asked Yurkovsky.
     "Yes," said Bykov. "You may play a little more."
     He turned and strode out.
     "Just as  I  told  you-not  a  damned  thing,"  said  Dauge. "Not  with
synchronisation gone."
     He  switched  off his  equipment  and  recovered  the  reel out of  the
dictaphone.
     "Grigory,"  said  Yurkovsky. "I have a shrewd suspicion Alexei's "up to
something. What do you think?"
     "I don't know," Dauge  said and glanced  at him. "What makes  you think
so?"
     "Just something in his ugly mug," said Yurkovsky. "I know my man."
     For a while everybody was  silent, only Mollard,  overcome by a feeling
of nausea, heaved occasional sighs. Presently Dauge said:
     "I'm famished. Where's our  soup, Charles? You spilt our soup and we're
hungry. Who's on duty today, Charles?"
     "I am," said Charles. At  the mention  of food the nausea came over him
again. But he said: "I shall go and make some more soup."
     "The Sun." said Yurkovsky.
     Dauge pressed his black eye to the viewer.
     "You see," said Mollard. "The Sun again."
     "But that isn't the Sun," said Dauge.
     "No," said Yurkovsky. "It doesn't look like the Sun."
     The  distant  luminescent mass  in the light-brown haze paled, swelling
and  drifting  apart  in  greying  patches,  and then disappeared. Yurkovsky
watched,  his  teeth  clamped  together  so hard  that  his  temples  ached.
Farewell, Sun, he thought. Farewell, Sun.
     "I'm hungry," Dauge said testily. "Let's go to the galley, Charles."
     He pushed off the wall deftly, sailed towards  the door and opened  it.
Mollard  too pushed  off and  hit his  head against the wall above the door.
Dauge  caught him by  his spread-fingered hand and pulled  him out into  the
gangway. Yurkovsky heard Grigory ask, "How's life-good?" and Mollard answer,
"Good,  but very inconvenient." "Never mind,"  Dauge  said cheerily. "You'll
get used to it soon."
     Never mind, Yurkovsky thought, it'll be all  over soon. He glanced into
the periscope. He saw the brownish  fog  grow still  denser overhead,  while
deep below  in the  incredible depths of  the hydrogen  abyss into which the
ship  was  falling an eerie pinkish light beckoned to him. He shut his eyes.
To live, he  thought. To live long.  To live eternally.  He clutched at  his
hair.  To live  even if he were deaf, blind, paralysed. Just to feel the sun
and the  wind on his skin  and a friend by his side. And pain, impotence and
pity. Just as now. He tore at his hair. Let it be just as now, but for ever.
Suddenly he became aware he  was breathing laboriously and came  to himself.
The feeling of unbearable, unreasoning terror was gone. This had happened to
him  before: on Mars twelve  years  before, in Golconda ten years before and
again on Mars  the year before last. A spasm of crazy desire just to live, a
desire as  obscure  and primordial as protoplasm  itself.  It swooped on him
like a black-out. But  it always passed.  It had  to  be  endured like sharp
pain. And  he  must start doing something. Alexei had ordered the instrument
portholes to be  battened. He took his hands from his face, opened his  eyes
and saw he was sitting on the floor.  The ship's  fall was  being braked and
things were acquiring weight.
     Yurkovsky  reached for a small panel and shut the instrument portholes,
the  orifices  in  the  ship's  hull  through  which  the receptors  of  the
instrumentation are thrust out. Then he  carefully spiked the breech of  the
bomb-release, collected the scattered bomb-cases and stacked  them neatly on
the rack. Then  he glanced through the  periscope and it seemed  to him that
the darkness overhead had become denser and the glow underneath stronger. He
thought  that no one before had penetrated Jupiter  to  such a depth  except
Sergei  Petrushevsky,  may he rest  in peace, and  even he had probably been
blown up earlier. His reflector was smashed too.
     He  went  out into the gangway  and headed for the mess  room, glancing
into all the cabins  on his way. The <i>Tahmasib</i> was still falling, though more
slowly every  minute, and Yurkovsky walked on tiptoe  as though under water,
balancing  with outspread arms and making involuntary little skips every now
and then. In the quiet gangway  Mollard's muffled  call  came  to him like a
war-cry:  "How's  life, Gregoire,  good?" Apparently Dauge  had managed  'to
restore the  Frenchman's high  spirits. He could not catch Dauge's response.
"Good," he muttered  and  even did not notice he  was no  longer stammering.
Good-in spite of everything.
     He glanced into Mikhail Antonovich's cabin. It  was dark and there  was
an odd  spicy smell. He went in and switched on the  light. In the middle of
the cabin lay a  ripped suit case. Never before had  he seen a suit case  in
such a state. It looked as though a bomb-probe had gone  off inside it.  The
mat-finished   ceiling   and   the   walls   were   spattered  with   brown,
slippery-looking  blotches. These gave off a spicy aroma. Spiced mussels, he
defined  promptly. He  was  very  fond  of  spiced  mussels  but  they  were
unfortunately  never  part of space flyers' rations.  He looked  around  and
spotted  a bright black patch-a  meteoric hole  '-just above  the  door. All
sections of the living quarters were air-tight. When the hull was pierced by
a meteorite, the  air supply was automatically cut until the synthetic resin
layer between the  ship's sheetings had had time to seal the hole. It took a
second, at the most two seconds, but pressure might drop quite substantially
in  that time. It was  not dangerous  for  man  but it would  be  fatal  for
contraband tinned food. Tins would just explode. Particularly when spiced. A
plain  case of smuggling, he thought. The  old glutton. Well,  you'll get it
hot from the captain. Bykov's never stood for smuggling.
     Yurkovsky gave the cabin a last glance and noticed that the black patch
shone  silver.  Aha, he  thought. Somebody must  have  been metallising  the
holes. Quite right too, for such a pressure would have just forced the resin
stoppers out. He switched off the light and  stepped  back into the gangway.
He felt dead tired and lead-heavy in his whole body. Oh,  damn, I'm cracking
up, he  thought, and suddenly he realised that the  tape  on  which his mike
hung  was  cutting  into  his  neck. Then he understood.  The  <i>Tahmasib</i>  was
arriving. Their  flight was coming to an end. In a few minutes gravity would
be  doubled,  overhead  there  would be  six thousand  miles  of  compressed
hydrogen  and under  their  feet forty  thousand miles  of  supercompressed,
liquid and solid hydrogen.
     Every  pound of  their  weight  would increase to  two  or  more.  Poor
Charles, he thought. Poor Misha.
     "Voldemar," Mollard called  from behind him.  "Voldemar, help us  carry
the soup. It's a very heavy soup."
     He looked  back. Dauge and Mollard,  both  flushed  and sweating,  were
pushing through the door of  the galley a heavily-swaying trolley with three
steaming  pots  on  it.  Yurkovsky  made  to meet  them  and only then fully
realised how heavy he had become. Mollard uttered a  vague sound and sank to
the  floor. The <i>Tahmasib</i> stopped. The ship,  her  crew, passengers and cargo
had arrived at their last port of call.

     2.  The  planetologists  interrogate  the  navigator  while  the  radio
astronomer interrogates the planetologists.

     "Who cooked  this meal?" asked  Bykov. He  ran his  eye  round them and
stared at the pots again. Mikhail Antonovich was breathing in gasps, leaning
heavily against the table top.  His face was  purplish and bloated. "I did,"
Mollard said  timidly. "But what's wrong  with  it?" asked Dauge.  They  all
spoke  in  hoarse  voices, only able to wheeze out a  few  words at  a time.
Mollard  smiled crookedly  and lay back on the  sofa. He felt quite bad. The
<i>Tahmasib</i>  had stopped and their weight was becoming unbearable. Bykov looked
at Mollard.
     "That meal will kill you," he said. "You'll eat and never get up again.
It'll crush you, you understand?"
     "Christ," Dauge said, annoyed. "I forgot all about gravity."
     Mollard lay still, eyes closed,  breathing heavily. His jaw was hanging
open.
     "We'll  have the soup,"  said Bykov. "And nothing more. Not a bite." He
glanced  at  Mikhail Antonovich  and grinned  mirthlessly.  "Not a bite," he
repeated.
     Yurkovsky took the ladle and served the soup.
     "A heavy meal," he said.
     "Smells tasty," said Mikhail  Antonovich. "Won't you  give me  a little
more, Vladimir old man?"
     "No more," Bykov said harshly. He was sipping his soup  slowly, holding
his spoon  in a childish way in  his fist,  which  was smeared with graphite
lubricant.
     They began eating  in  silence. Mollard made an attempt  to get  up and
sank back again. "I can't," he said. "Excuse me, but I can't."
     Bykov put down his spoon and rose.
     "I recommend all passengers to get into their  acceleration absorbers,"
he  said.  Dauge shook his head. "As  you  like," said Bykov. "But make sure
Mollard gets into his."
     "Right," said Yurkovsky.
     Dauge  took  up  Mollard's  plate,  sat  down   beside  him  and  began
spoon-feeding him expertly. His eyes closed, he was swallowing noisily.
     "And where's Ivan?" asked Yurkovsky.
     "On watch,"  said Bykov.  He took the  pot with  the remaining soup and
strode heavily towards the hatchway. With pursed lips Yurkovsky  watched the
stooped figure go.
     "My mind's made  up, boys," Mikhail Antonovich said in a pitiful voice.
"I'm going to start slimming. This won't do. I'm over four hundred and fifty
pounds  now-the mere thought  of  it makes  me shudder.  And that's  not the
limit. We're still falling a little."
     He leaned against the back  of his chair, crossing his bloated hands on
his  stomach. Then he  wriggled a little,  transferred  his hands on to  the
armrests and almost immediately was asleep.
     "Fatty's  asleep,"  Dauge said,  turning to  look at  him. "The  ship's
aground  and  the navigator's  asleep. One more spoonful, Charles," he said.
"For Daddy. That's good. Now for Mummy."
     "Excuse  me,  I can't," Mollard murmured. "I can't. I'll 'lie down." He
lay back and started mumbling incoherently in French.
     Dauge put the plate on the table.
     "Mikhail," he called softly. "Misha."
     Mikhail Antonovich snored away.
     "Watch  me  wake him  up," said  Yurkovsky. "Mikhail," he  said softly.
"Mussels. Spiced mussels."
     Mikhail  Antonovich started and woke up.  "What?"  he mumbled.  "What?"
"Troubled conscience," said Yurkovsky.  Dauge  fixed the navigator with  his
eye. "What are you up to, you in the control room?" he said.
     Mikhail  Antonovich's red lids  blinked, then he shifted in  his chair,
mumbled faintly: "Oh, I quite forgot..." and tried to get up.
     "Stay put," said Dauge.
     "What're you up to there?" asked Yurkovsky.
     "And what's the ruddy use anyway?"
     "Nothing  special," Mikhail  Antonovich said  and looked  back  at  the
hatchway. "Nothing, boys, honest. We're just...."
     "Misha," said Yurkovsky. "We can see he's up to something."
     "Spill the beans, fatty," Dauge said fiercely.
     Again the navigator tried to get up.
     "Stay put,"  Yurkovsky said implacably. "Mussels. Spiced mussels. Speak
up."
     Mikhail Antonovich flushed poppy-red.
     "We're  not children," said Dauge. "We've faced death before. What  the
hell are you plotting there?"
     "There is a chance," the navigator mumbled faintly.
     "There's always a chance," said Dauge. "Be specific."
     "A tiny  chance," said Mikhail  Antonovich.  "Really,  boys,  I must be
off."
     "What  are  they doing?"  asked  Dauge.  "What're  they so  wrapped  up
in-Alexei and Ivan?"
     Mikhail Antonovich looked longingly at the hatchway.
     "He doesn't want  to tell you,"  he whispered. "Doesn't want to raise a
false hope in you.  But  he hopes to get us out of this. They're rearranging
the  magnetic trap system.... And please stop pestering me!" he shouted in a
thin voice, struggled up and hobbled to the control room.
     <i>"Mon dieu,"</i> Mollard said softly and .lay back again.
     "Oh,  nonsense,  straw-clutching," said Dauge;  "It's just  that  Bykov
can't sit still  with  the Old Floorer about  to  get us. Come  on. Come on,
Charles, we'll put you in the acceleration absorber. Captain's orders."
     Between them  they got Mollard  on his  feet and  walked him  along the
gangway. His head was lolling.
     <i>"Mon dieu,"</i> he mumbled. "Excuse me. I am a bad space flyer. I am only a
radio astronomer."
     It was no easy job  to drag Mollard along when  they  had difficulty in
walking themselves,  but still they got  him  to his cabin and then into the
acceleration  absorber.  He  lay  in  the  oversize  box, small,  miserable,
blue-faced, fighting for breath.
     "You'll feel better in a moment, Charles," said Dauge. Yurkovsky nodded
and winced with the pain in his back. "Have a rest," he said.
     "Good," said Mollard. "Thank you, <i>camarades."</i>
     Dauge slid the top in place and tapped on it. Mollard tapped back.
     "Well,  that's  that," said Dauge.  "I  wish  we  could  get a pair  of
antigrav suits."
     Yurkovsky  went to the  door without saying  anything. There were  only
three  such  suits on board their  ship-<i>for</i>  her crew.  The passengers  were
expected to  take  to their  acceleration absorbers whenever the  G-load was
increased.
     They  made a  round of the cabins and  collected all  the  blankets and
cushions they could 'lay their hands  on. Back  in the observation  bay they
made themselves as comfortable as they could at the two periscopes, then lay
back  and were  silent for  a while, resting. Breathing was difficult.  They
felt as though heavy weights had been laid on their chests.
     "Reminds  me of the time  I had acceleration training," said Yurkovsky.
"Had to slim a lot."
     "So had I," said Dauge. "But I don't remember much. What's  that spiced
mussel nonsense?"
     "Quite a delicacy,  isn't it?" said Yurkovsky. "Our navigator had a few
tins stowed away and they went bang in his suit case."
     "No,"  said Dauge. "Not again?  What a glutton.  What a  smuggler. He's
'lucky Bykov's busy."
     "Bykov probably doesn't know yet," said Yurkovsky.
     And never will,  he  thought. They fell  silent, then  Dauge  took  the
observation  logs   and  began  leafing  through   them.  They  made  a  few
calculations, then had an argument about the meteoric attack. Dauge  said it
was a stray swarm. Yurkovsky claimed it was a ring. "A ring round
     Jupiter?"  Dauge  said  contemptuously. 'That's right," said Yurkovsky.
"I've  suspected  one for  .a long  time. Now it's been proved."  "No," said
Dauge.  "Anyway it's  not  a  ring.  It's  a half-ring."  "Perhaps  it  is,"
Yurkovsky  agreed.  "Kangren's a wizard," said Dauge. "His calculations  are
amazingly exact." "Not quite," Yurkovsky demurred.
     "Why not?" 'asked Dauge.
     "Because  temperature increases have been markedly  slower,"  Yurkovsky
explained.
     "That's  inner luminescence of a non-classical type,"  Dauge  retorted.
"That's just it- non-classical," said Yurkovsky.
     "Kangren couldn't have possibly taken account of it," said Dauge.
     "But he should," said Yurkovsky. "There  have  been arguments about  it
for the last hundred years and lie should have taken it into account."
     "You're  ashamed, that's all,"  said Dauge. "You  had  such a row  with
Kangren that time in Dublin and now you're ashamed."
     "You're a fool," said Yurkovsky.
     "Of course you're ashamed," said Dauge.
     "I  was right," said Yurkovsky. "I took the non-classical  effects into
account."
     "I  know,"  said Dauge. "But if you do," said Yurkovsky, "why don't you
stop your nonsense?"
     "Don't shout  at me,"  said  Dauge. "This is no  nonsense. You took the
non-classical  effects into account all  right, but look at the  price we're
paying for it."
     "It's the price you're  paying,"  Yurkovsky said, getting angry. "I see
you haven't read my latest paper."
     "Well," said Dauge, "don't get shirty. My back's got numb."
     "So's mine," said Yurkovsky.
     He turned over and got on all fours. It wasn't  easy. He  reached up to
the periscope and glanced into it.
     "Have a look," he said.
     They looked  into the periscopes.  The <i>Tahmasib</i> was  floating in a void
filled with a pinkish light. There was absolutely nothing to rest their eyes
on. Just an even pinkish light everywhere. It seemed they  were looking at a
phosphorescent screen. After a long silence Yurkovsky said:
     "Rather dull, isn't it?"
     He straightened the cushions and lay down again.
     "No one  has  seen  this before,"  said  Dauge. "It's metallic hydrogen
radiation."
     "A fat  lot  of  good  such observations  will do us," said  Yurkovsky.
"Suppose we pair a periscope with the spectrograph?"
     "Rubbish,"  Dauge said, hardly able to move his lips. He slid on to the
cushions and also lay on his back. "A pity," he said. "To think  that no one
has ever seen this before."
     "I feel  just rotten doing nothing," said Yurkovsky. Dauge rose  on  an
elbow suddenly and craned  his neck, listening. "What's happened?" Yurkovsky
asked.
     "Quiet," said Dauge. "Listen."
     Yurkovsky listened. A faint low rumbling came from  somewhere, changing
in  volume like a giant bumble-bee buzzing. The rumbling rose in pitch, then
died down.
     "What's that?" said Dauge.
     "I  dunno," Yurkovsky said in an  undertone. He sat up. "Surely not the
engine?"
     "No, it's  from that side." Dauge waved a hand at the periscopes. "Well
now...."  They listened and  again heard a rumbling  sound  swelling into  a
high-pitched buzz, then dying down.
     "Must have  a look,