"There!" cried Syd. "Look there, Chip! Below us!"
Chip risked a brief glance, saw that the smooth and icy surface of Titania was broken by a long, ragged swatch of black. Ironic laughter curled the corners of his tight-set lips. What a quirk of fate that here, with death but a hair's-breadth removed, they should unwittingly find that for which under happier circumstances they might have sought endlessly and in vain. The promised spot of habitation on the bleak little moon of Uranus.
"I'm fore-jetting!" he crisped. "Stand by for—a fadeout!"
Salvation's hand was on his shoulder, reassuringly, somehow warm despite its casement of rubberoid fabric. "Be of strong heart, my son," he said simply, "He who watcheth the fall of the smallest sparrow, He shall not fail His own in their hour of need."
Then Chip pressed the necessary, the only remaining responsive keys. And the control room trembled like a hurt thing, seemed to stop stock-still in space, shake itself for a moment—then plunge on. Forejets flamed blast upon roaring blast. Chip felt the gravitational force seem to lessen as the flares beat stubbornly against the adamant breast of the globe below. Drop ... stagger ... drop again ... the shocking concussion of brakes ... then a swift, dizzy, headlong fall....
Wild winds howled, and the din of metals tortured beyond endurance slashed at Chip's eardrums. He was aware of the last cry of Syd Palmer, his life-long friend. "Luck, Chip, old pal—!" And the remembered ghost of Salvation's promise. "He shall not fail His own—"
Then a horrendous crash jarred his head back on the seat. A smashing veil of crimson settled before his eyes ... then there was darkness. And silence.
He felt some mad conceit that this was death ... that the restless fingers of the gray unalive plucked at his arm, bidding him rise and stir forward toward he knew not what.
Then suddenly he was awake, alive, and conscious—and it was not death, but life; fingers did tug at him, but they were the figures of—