When eons of agony later it seemed his laboring lungs could no longer supply his wracked body with precious oxygen, when it seemed but a matter of seconds before his very veins must burst beneath the crushing of that horrid acceleration, there descended upon Gary Lane a brief moment of vertigo. Darkness spun dizzily before his eyes. And when the instant passed, the pressure was gone. He was free to rise again from the hard metal deck to which gravitation had skewered him.
It was a measure of his fortitude that of all his companions save only the space-hardened Captain Hugh Warren, Gary should have been the first to regain his feet. Muldoon followed his example seconds later, to be followed slowly by the girl and the cockney steward, then the two older men. It was 'Erby 'Awkins who broke the labored silence.
"Well," he said with shaken satisfaction. "Well, it were touch-and-go for a moment, weren't it? But we seems to be orl right now. Wot blinkin' cheer, eh, shipmates?"
Nora said with a palpable effort toward regaining a vestige of her usual composure, "Touch-and-go is right! I've lifted gravs before, but never so swiftly nor so suddenly. If you ask me, that's no way for a girl to keep her figure."
"I'm sorry," said little Dr. Anjers contritely. "I am deeply sorry, my friends. It was all my fault. Had I not stumbled and fallen, inadvertently roused an alarm—"
"Forget it," said Flick Muldoon. "Everybody pulls a pancake once in a while. It's just tough luck that you happened to pull yours at a bad moment. The main thing is, what are we going to do now?"
He looked at Warren questioningly, but Warren's eyes were upon Gary.
"That's your cue, Gary. I'm just flying this ship; you're plotting the course."
Lane said soberly, "Well, Venus is our first logical stop, but I don't know—now. The whole Patrol will be out after us like a pack of hounds."
Hugh Warren chuckled grimly, "Let them. They'll never catch the Liberty. This is the fastest little ship afloat in space. We can run circles around anything that ever punched holes in the ether."