On the wall above the switch little green lights began to blink off one by one. As if gradually understanding his strategy, the men began to move up behind Pritchard, their eyes on the bank of fiery green points winking out.
The last little gem flickered, died, and then, strangely, flamed up again.
And, just as it went out for good, the entire muster deck gave a lurch. Feet scuffled, slipped, staggered. Here and there a body thudded to the steel plates of the floor.
Pritchard's voice rose thundering above the abrupt commotion. "Grab hold! Something's got the ship—something—"
The muster deck swung in a wild circle, men sliding helplessly, caroming off the walls. Pritchard's flailing hand caught something and his long bony fingers laced about it in a grip of steel.
In benumbed fascination, he saw his body lengthen out, straining against that grip, appearing to levitate from the deck. The whole chamber tilted slowly until it seemed to hang below him. Men were slipping and falling down into the curved well of its farther wall, but some had grabbed out at holds here and there—a door-pull, or a stanchion, and dangled like Pritchard.
At the last instant he understood that the Apollo was falling. He had just time to pull himself up, to give his arm some play against the shock to come—
The great pointed cylinder struck with an awesome, deafening clangor—fell with a single bounce across its landing burn and settled to roll over approximately one-third its circumference.
Pritchard's grip, he discovered later, was to the handle of a locked chart drawer. The massive wrench of that impact straightened his arm with a jerk, but at the same time the drawer's lock broke. He fell away in a shower of sheet film just as the Apollo rolled, and a curve of smooth steel wall swung out to catch him and break his fall into a plunging glide against a cushion of stunned men's bodies.
It was a miracle that nobody was seriously injured. The slowness of the ship's fall at the outset, the curvature of walls, the general fitness of trained minds and bodies—all combined to prevent anything more serious than cuts and contusions.