Broster looked up, bracing himself.
"Stand by to crash!"
The four stopped everything, turned to look at each other for a moment in silence. In a few seconds more they would simply cease to exist. No pain, no hours of lingering agony trapped in the wreckage. At the speed they were going, the entire ship would be volatilized, would fuse into a molten, glowing mass.
They turned again to the plates to look for a last time at the universe around them.
For six years they had traveled away from earth, far, far beyond any point man had ever dreamed of reaching. They were almost to the point where the order to turn back would have been given. Much had been learned; now it would be lost.
Broster gave her full acceleration.
They saw the planet seemingly leap toward them, saw cloudbanks flick past them. A great flat plain of ruddy rock, a dread expanse of barren granite. This in the veriest fragment of a second, then—
A momentary shock, as if each man had received an electrical jolt; a sudden flash of intolerable red. Darkness.
The earthmen blinked their eyes.