The Captain's sagging body jackknifed erect. "Blast our way out? What do you mean, Dave?"
"I've clamped expulsor disks on the cosmic ray absorbers and trained them downward. A thin stream of accidental neutrons directed against the bottom of the bubble may disrupt its energies—wear it thin. It's a long gamble, but worth taking. We're staking nothing, remember?"
Forrester sputtered: "Nothing but our lives! If you blast a hole in the bubble you'll destroy its energy balance. Did that occur to you? Inside a lopsided bubble we may careen dangerously or fall into the sea before we can get the rotaries started."
"I thought of that. The pilots are standing by to start the rotaries the instant we lurch. If we succeed in making a rent in the bubble we'll break out the helicoptic vanes and descend vertically. The rotaries won't backfire again. I've had their burnt-out cylinder heads replaced."
An agitated voice came from the visiplate on the captain's desk: "Tuning in, sir."
Lawton stopped pacing abruptly. He swung about and grasped the desk edge with both hands, his head touching Forrester's as the two men stared down at the horizontal face of petty officer James Caldwell.
Caldwell wasn't more than twenty-two or three, but the screen's opalescence silvered his hair and misted the outlines of his jaw, giving him an aspect of senility.
"Well, young man," Forrester growled. "What is it? What do you want?"
The irritation in the captain's voice seemed to increase Caldwell's agitation. Lawton had to say: "All right, lad, let's have it," before the information which he had seemed bursting to impart could be wrenched out of him.
It came in erratic spurts. "The bubble is all blooming, sir. All around inside there are big yellow and purple growths. It started up above, and—and spread around. First there was just a clouding over of the sky, sir, and then—stalks shot out."