But now we were in a sorry mess indeed! Caught in a gravitational grip thousands of times greater than Jupiter's; a million times more deadly. Once, from afar, I had been the unwilling but horror-fascinated witness of the fate of a ship gripped by Sol's terrific attraction. A dark mote struggling futilely against the brazen magnet that beckoned ... a moment's brief and hopeless essay to escape ... then a tiny, ochre flame glinting wanly....
Such a vision must have been flashing, also, through the mind of Major Gilchrist. For from his prostrate vantagepoint he loosed a howl of sheer panic.
"Oh, no!" he screamed. "Oh, no! No! No! No!"
How long that monotonous denial would have continued there is no way of guessing. But Cap Hanson, who despite all his faults has little use for a fool and no use for a coward, put an abrupt end to it. Straining against the pressure that half-immobilized us, he lurched to Gilchrist's side, bent and silenced the efficiency expert's wailing with a sense-rousing slap across the cheek.
"Stop that, you damn fool!" he roared. "The audio's open! Do you want to panic every man aboard this ship?" And as Gilchrist relapsed into whimpering silence, he swiveled to me heavily. "Sparks, there's only one chance. The velocity-intensifier. Tell Garrity—"
The velocity-intensifier, or V-I unit to give it its more common name, was that device invented by Biggs which enables a spaceship to increase its normal cruising speed to an incredible 186,000 mps—the speed of light! I could see the Old Man's idea. Attain that velocity and we might break free of Sol's hold. I said, "Aye, sir!" and was just about to cry the necessary orders to the engine-room when:
"No!" The familiar voice of Lt. Lancelot Biggs rang through the turret. "No, Sparks! Don't do that! It is sure death! As our speed increases, so does our mass! We'll only accelerate our fall into the Sun!"
I remembered, then, that every cabin was hooked into a round-robin circuit, via telaudio. So though it would have been humanly impossible for Lancelot Biggs to come up to this turret now, he was as truly with us as if he stood beside us. I cried back answer.
"But what can we do, Mr. Biggs?"