So what? The Slipstream, traveling at better than double our speed, knocked off a cool six million that same day! Oh, if ever a "race" was in the bag, that one was!
The second day was another dose of the same business. Biggs insisted that we maintain our forced speed, although Garrity warned him bluntly that it was dangerous.
"I been twenty years in space, Mr. Biggs," Garrity told him sternly. "I look forward to spendin' another score the same way. But I have no desire to whisk along the spaceways as a glowing clinker."
Lancelot Biggs said desperately, "But we've got to do our best, Chief! We're beaten, yes—but we've got to show a little fight. Anything may happen. They may have an accident—a breakdown—"
There was a pathetic intensity in his voice. Once again, as several times before, I found myself thinking this Lancelot Biggs guy, screwy as he might seem, had plenty of abdomen-stuffings. Garrity must have felt the same way, for he said, grudgingly, "Verra well, then. But...."
So, for the third day in succession, our hypatomic motors churned like a bevy of Martian canal-kitties having their morning dunk. And for the third day in succession, the Cosmos Company's super-freighter, the Slipstream, proceeded to show us the winking red dot of her rapidly disappearing after-jets.
And then it happened!
I was in my turret, reading a copy of Spaceways Weekly, when all of a sudden my bug started chattering and the condenser needle started hopping. I plugged in and caught a garbled, frantic warning from the Sparks on the Slipstream.
"Calling IPS Saturn! Calling IPS Saturn! Saturn, stand clear for back-drag! Stand clear for back-drag!"