All the while the Magogean had been speaking, Hugh Warren's fingers had been twisting dials on the control panel. Now, his face aflame with anger, he roared defiantly, "Like hell we will, Borisu. The Space Patrol dies but never surrenders! If you want to board us ... come find us!"
And his finger pressed suddenly down upon the green key installed by the Jovian engineers. A violent shudder trembled the Liberty from stem to stern, warped plates screamed in metal agony, and for an instant it seemed the straining ship would shake herself to shards, so great was the shock of that abrupt movement.
But even as lurching passengers tumbled headlong upon the metal deck, as contact broke abruptly between their ship and the Magogean fleet, Warren pressed a second stud: this time the red one.
Then horror loomed upon horror. For in the vision plate which fore-shadowed the Liberty's trajectory, appeared a gigantic darkness blotting out all space.
Gary Lane cried hoarsely, "My God, what—"
"Hugh!" screamed Nora Powell. "What have you done?"
But Warren's voice smashed through their cries of dismay, roaring crisp orders to the control room below. "Search-beams, Howard!"
And the young engineer's voice came back shakily, "Aye, sir! Search beams it is, sir!"
The darkness before them was rent with silver radiance. And what had seemed a black, impenetrable nothingness was now revealed as a black landscape over which the Liberty was hurtling like a bird in the night. Dark hills loomed starkly through whipping fingers of fog. The search-beams limned sharp outlines of crags and gulleys, forests thick with uncombed vegetation....