“Ready!” came the signal in Long’s receiver.
Long called, “Ready!” and depressed the contact.
The vibration grew about him. The star field in the visiplate trembled.
In the rearview, there was a distant gleaming spume of swiftly moving ice crystals.
“It’s blowing!” was the cry.
It kept on blowing. Long dared not stop. For six hours, it blew, hissing, bubbling, steaming into space; the body of the planetoid converted to vapor and hurled away.
The Shadow came closer until men did nothing but stare at the mountain in the sky, surpassing Saturn itself in spectacularity. Its every groove and valley was a plain scar upon its face. But when it passed through the planetoid’s orbit, it crossed more than half a mile behind its then position.
The steam jet ceased.
Long bent in his seat and covered his eyes. He hadn’t eaten in two days. He could eat now, though. Not another planetoid was close enough to interrupt them, even if it began an approach that very moment.
Back on the planetoid’s surface, Swenson said, “All the time I watched that damned rock coming down, I kept saying to myself, ‘This can’t happen. We can’t let it happen.’ ”