The lights died, too—all save the self-contained, dimly-luminous emergency radiation lamps. The rhythmic throbbing of the ventilating system halted also. So did the force drive's heavier beat. A sudden, incredible feeling of lightness came over Dane. Then his angle of view changed, and he realized that—unaware—he'd drifted clear of the floor; was now floating in mid-air. So the artificial gravity was off too.
A numb horror crept through him in the same instant. In his mind he cursed himself for a blind, imperceptive fool.
The thing he'd seen on the now-blank screen was no asteroid or meteor, but a globe-ship, a Kalquoi globe-ship! And the light was some sort of energy-diverting ray that had the power to incapacitate spaceship equipment.
So this was the end of his mad venture: not at Sandoz, not on Callisto, but here, aboard this crippled craft, destined perhaps to drift forever in blackness on the void-tides between the Asteroid Belt and the Outer Worlds.
Dane would have killed himself in that moment, if he could.
But he couldn't even do that. No; he could only hang here in the dimness, paralyzed, somewhere between floor and ceiling, waiting ... waiting ... waiting....
But now light crept through the gloom—a pale, purplish radiance Dane found somehow vaguely familiar.
Then a slight movement of the ship changed his position. His eyes, searching, found the source of light.
It came from the unforked end of the Kalquoi yat-stick Dane had wrapped in plastic to simulate a proton bomb. While he watched, it grew brighter ... brighter ... as if the metal bar were oozing energy the way a fresh-cut spring twig oozes sap.
Now the radiance grew to an eddying, pulsing ball, so intense it lighted up the entire astrogation chamber.