But he did not stir in his seat. His left hand stayed pressed against his side.
The ship would be coasting downward now. Its wings still gave some support, and its wingtips had some effect, but not enough. Now was the time to use the steam-jets on the fins. McCauley played them tensely as if they were a musical instrument. He struck balances of opposing thrusts as if they were chords. The nose of the ship steadied, steadied, steadied....
The timer button was set at one minute. He struck the rocket-firing button.
He was hurled back in his seat with a sort of vicious and unreasonable violence. He was caught in a vise of twelve gravities pressure which held him motionless against the seat back and tried to flatten out his legs and body and prevent his breathing. But his flight suit was designed to prevent exactly this. It squeezed also. His legs were tightened unbearably. His arms were constricted past endurance. His chest, his stomach—he was confined in the most horrible of strait jackets. He felt his tongue curling back down his throat to strangle him. With an utterly herculean effort he managed to turn his head to one side. Then he could breathe, and the grav-pressure air protected his chest from collapse, and he endured and endured and endured.
The minute of the rocket thrust lasted for centuries. Then the engine cut off, and his head was pure anguish from the blood spurted through it by his still-laboring heart. He was blinded by the pain. But it went away.
Slowly, slowly, slowly, his sound-deadened ears regained their sensitiveness. He heard Furness gasping:
"—minute rocket-blast ended. Checking course now. Over."
McCauley said absorbedly:
"There was a goof. A twelve-gee thrust with full fuel tanks is a whale of a lot more when they're nearly empty!"
It was true, of course. The ferocity of a rocket thrust that would accelerate a fully loaded ship at three hundred fifty-odd feet per second per second would accelerate much more a ship weighing half as much. Toward the end, McCauley and Furness had taken acceleration that no man could live through for more than a very short time. But a man can endure briefly a stress that would kill him if long-continued.