With grim deliberation he aimed the nose of the ship at the center of one of the yellow spheres. Swiftly, the yellow dumbell-shaped star grew in the direct vision plate, spreading a saffron glow over the differential visor. Yellow blotted out all the other colors of space. The vision screen began to glow not only with light, but with a faint heat of its own.
But the air in the rest of the ship had become cool. The radiation system was working beautifully, and the creatures on the yellow star must know that. The system would be shattered in the corona, vaporized in the star itself. But what harm might it not do before it died?
Jan shivered, without knowing whether it was from the drop in temperature, or from the growing fear that was overwhelming him. From the yellow star there came no move. Another few seconds, and the screen would begin to falter and fail. When that happened it would be too late to reverse the direction of the ship. It would plunge straight into the fiery mass.
He turned to Karin, and said hoarsely, "I'm sorry, darling, you were right after all. We should have waited."
"No, I couldn't have stood it any longer. It's better this way, Jan—"
Something struck the ship a great blow. Something sent them whirling end over end away from the yellow star. With the motors blasting away as strongly as they could, the ship was describing a great erratic arc, like a toy jet set off by a child, and tossed high into the air.
But there was no air here, nothing to brake the crazy spin. Yellow and green flashed in and out of the viewing screens, fainter and smaller each time. They were being hurled away from the twin stars with a constantly mounting velocity, a terrifying lurching and swaying.
Jan began to drag himself toward the controls, saw that Karin had already reached them. The ship was straightening out. At times it wobbled so violently that he was afraid of the strain on the hull. But the wobbling never persisted, always being transformed, just in time into another form of erratic spin.
Slowly their energy of rotation died away, absorbed by the anti-spin gyroscopes. When they straightened out, they were far past the barrier. Eighty million miles separated them from the two stars. Streamers of blackness were shooting from both ends of the green spindle toward the yellow dumbell, which had contracted sharply in an attempt to defend itself.
Jan took a deep breath. "We were lucky," he cried. "They were both under so much tension, they took me seriously. The yellow star diverted some of its forces to defend itself from me, and the green star used the occasion to head off the attack with a counter-attack of its own."