And—well, am I a fool? After all, Lancelot Biggs and I are old buddies. Once we were bunkmates, even. There came back to me a measure of the confidence I had once had in him. And I nodded to Todd.
"Try it, Dick. We've got nothing to lose and everything to gain. Give the order."
He did. Chief Garrity must have been startled but he was too good a spaceman to argue an order from the bridge. He said, succinctly, "Aye, sirr!" And then—
I felt the rocking plunge. The moment of brief, incredible dizziness of frightful speed being intensified to the limiting velocity of light. My head whirled, but somehow I managed to turn, stare at that ominous viewpane. And what I saw there brought a shocked cry from my lips!
White—white—dazzling white—then grayness! No other scene than dim and vacant void, gray, infinite, impenetrable. A glimpse of the lost universe—the matrix negative wherein are flung such mad things as attain a speed beyond that of the limiting velocity.
Then crackling across the room agonizedly, "We're clear, Todd? We're through?"
And Todd replying dazedly, "I—I don't know what you mean."
"The chronometer, man! Has it touched 9.14?"
"Yes, sir. But—but we're slipping into the negative, Lanse! We've escaped one death to find another!"
But there was infinite sadness to Lancelot Biggs' denial.