Diane rose, smiling pertly. "All right, so I'm untidy. Well—show them, Lancelot!"
Biggs rose. He looked carefully at the clock; then at the statometer. He moved to the intercommunicating system, gargled a word to the engine room below. "Mr. Garrity, would you be kind enough to revolve the ship?"
Hanson yelled, "Re—revolve the—Hey! Grab him, somebody! He's gone space-batty! He's slipped his gravs!"
From below there came the sound of the rotors going into operation. We couldn't feel anything, of course. The ship's artificial gravs hold you firm to the floor no matter which is top or bottom in space. There being no such thing. After a minute Biggs said, "Thank you, Mr. Garrity. Now, if you will be kind enough to reverse gravs and throw out the top-deck repulsion beams?"
Garrity obeyed. There came a sudden shock; everything movable in the room moved. Including me. I fell to the middle of the room, hung there gaping, weightless, the same as everyone else. The Saturn lurched and shuddered; it felt as if something trembled along her beams for a brief instant.
Then, suddenly, we were literally scorching through space again! Real space—not that phoney hyper-stuff of the vacuole. Biggs yelled, "Normal gravs, Garrity! Alter course to point-six-one for three minutes, then land...."
Cap Hanson screamed, "What the—what's going on here? Land? What do you mean—land!"
And Lancelot Biggs said, "If you'll be kind enough to look through the perilens, Captain...."
It was Earth. Just as big as life and three times as natural. A hop-skip-and-jump beneath us. We had made the Venus-to-Earth shuttle in four days, eight hours!