"We've blown that staging into the middle of next week!" chuckled Bennie.
The room swayed as the Ring, lifted by the tractor, rocked drunkenly from side to side for a second or two. Then, as the machine steadied itself, there came an upward pressure from the floor again and a sudden increase in their weight, which told them they were rising.
Rhoda, who, in the excitement of the moment, had forgotten Bennie's instructions, felt her knees bend quickly under her and found herself upon the floor, where an unseen, relentless force seemed to be pressing her down. Above her, Bennie had dragged himself up the spiral stairway to the small observing-stage which hung suspended from the ceiling, and was now lying on his back, with his eye glued to the vertical telescope that pointed up through the glass deadlight in the roof.
Burke, who, at discovering Rhoda's presence, had merely nodded and grinned as if not at all surprised at her being there, stood at his post near the side window with his hand on the control-lever. To him, Bennie gave his orders from where he lay.
Medusa, the bluish green star which was their destination, swam in the firmament well off toward the edge of the field of the telescope; the direction of their flight must needs be altered until the asteroid touched the illuminated cross-wires at the center. "More to the west!" shouted Bennie. "More—more—still more! Hold it! Too far—back a little! Now you're on the wire—a little south! More! Hold! There we are! All right!"
He scrambled to his feet, and descending the stairs too hastily, landed in a heap at the bottom.
"My Lord," he groaned, rubbing his shins; "I nearly broke my leg! Never run down-stairs when you're going up. Be sure and remember that."
Rhoda, meanwhile, flat on the floor, half sick from the acceleration, with her face pressed against the lower deadlight, watched the earth rush downward and away. At first she could see nothing but the dazzling cone of yellow light that shot away from them, like the tail of a great rocket, but presently, by partially shielding her eyes with her hand, she was able to discover a great and ever widening ring of yellow dust, with riffles of light and shade chasing each other outward, and, in the middle, a maelstrom of earth and shattered timbers. Then she saw that the lights of the city and of the neighboring towns seemed to be flowing in from all sides to a point just below her.
"Twenty thousand feet!" yelled Burke, shouting out the readings of the manometer as they rose. "Thirty thousand!"
Hooker crawled along the floor to her side, and she clutched his hand.