These were suits within suits, double layers of tough plasticoid. Mark stepped into his, opened the pressure valve that forced air between the two thicknesses. The outer one ballooned, giving a grotesque, roly-poly appearance. He bounced hard against the wall to test it.
"Better open them full," Janus advised.
They were ready. They stood against the far wall and watched the screen across the room. Callisto was looming. They'd soon be within its gravity.
Ferris, standing beside Mark, said in a low voice: "What kind of a news-man are you, Travers? Y'oughta be getting pictures of this. Make swell release stuff when you get back to Earth." His tone was mocking.
Mark felt a growing dislike of this man. He suppressed a retort, said curtly instead: "Too late now." He had placed his "camera" safely in an inside pocket.
The Patrollers' magnetic beams still towed them along at terrific speed, setting up a slight vibration in the walls.
Suddenly there was a new kind of vibration. Mark didn't know what it was. Certainly not rocket tubes.
"Get set!" Janus warned.
Someone muttered: "If he slips out of six magnetic beams—" but that was all. A fierce surge came beneath their feet, and Callisto seemed to leap at them. Within seconds a ghastly nausea gripped their insides. The ballooning suits were pressed so flat against the wall it became impossible to breathe! Their hearts pumped sluggishly, and a gray veil began to form before their eyes....
These were men so accustomed to hardships that space-acceleration meant nothing, but now they were experiencing something new in acceleration. They felt as if their entrails were being compressed into atoms!