Biggs explained, "That's the hypatomics being thrown into reverse. Anti-grav units are activated in the nose of the ship, then when we get the course variation we swing around our objective. Common space practice, Hank."
"That's what," said Hank dubiously, "I figgered. Is it common space practice to make a beeline for danger, though, like Billy-be-damned?"
And he pointed to the visiplate. Biggs' eyes followed his finger—and Biggs gasped.
"Great whirling comets! It's got us caught!"
For despite the mounting clamor of the reversed engines, despite the anti-gravitational units of which Biggs had boasted, despite the swiftly redoubled orders and efforts of a shocked Captain Hanson—the Saturn's speed had definitely increased!
The figure in the plate was looming larger moment by moment, and even to my untrained eye it was plain that we were slam-banging, hell-for-leather, toward a crackup!
Don't ask me what happened in the next few minutes. I wouldn't know. It's all one whirling blind spot in my memory. Up till now, this entire affair had partaken of the nature of a dream. Amusing, not unpleasant, but quite remote and faintly incredible.
Now, suddenly, I realized it was not a dream. But that I, Jim Blakeson, publicity representative of Midland U., had somehow been dragged out of the normal routine of everyday life and thrust into a wild, impossible adventure in a world three centuries beyond my time.
It was a disturbing awakening. It didn't make matters a bit better to realize that I was now—along with five other twentieth century exiles—in imminent peril of being slapped out of existence by a gigantic planet that shouldn't be in a dull, gray universe that didn't exist!