Carlson laughed, deep in his hairy chest.
"Right!" he said. "We'll be rid of both of you! An unfortunate accident, o' course. We'll be so sorry when we reach Jupiter! We'll think of you cruising around the Spot until you run out of tri-oxine!" He motioned to the companionway. "We got the life rocket all ready! Get going!"
Haller glanced through a port at the bitter darkness of space. Sent out in a life rocket! No chance of even reaching the ship-lanes in one of the little cylinders! Doomed to drift without control in the void until lack of food, oxygen, brought death!
"Come on!" Seltzsky dug a gun into his back. "Step on it!"
"Wait a minute!" Haller's gaze shifted to the control panel. Suddenly he laughed. "So you're heading for Mars after you get rid of us? Going to try it without instruments?"
"Without instruments?" Seltzsky's beady eyes swung to the illuminated board, and his face went white. The gravity compass and spaceometer were swinging back and forth crazily until they seemed like metronomes!
"The controls! They've gone haywire!" Carlson dropped the bottle of tong, made a dive for the radio. "We'll call Mars, pick up a beam." His voice trailed away. The screen of the televisor was a haze of fantastically dancing dots, the speaker gave off a fierce and uninterrupted crackle of static!
"Beginning to enjoy yourselves?" Haller queried lazily. "That's how it got the name of the Magnetic Spot! You waited just a trifle too long before putting the ship about!"
"Huh!" Carlson sprang to the controls. "The forward rockets'll throw us in reverse! Once we're out of the field, the radio and dials'll come back to normal!" He tugged at levers and the stuttering roar of the forward rockets shook the ship, while through the observation port they could see red flame enveloping her nose.