The RQ257, wrapped in its protecting halo of blue fire from the Penetrator, struck the Forbidden Moon's tremendous, invisible envelope of energy, squarely. There was a snarling sound in the ship's interior. White sparks lanced through cold space beyond the windows of the cabin, as two opposed forces fought each other. But the RQ257 bored on steadily.
"We're going to make it, Paul!" Harwich shouted through the reeking, dinning cabin.
"Of course we are!" young Arnold yelled back at him. "How could we fail!"
The two men were on the brink of success.
Then there was an abrupt, strident, angry, snap from the vitals of the Penetrator apparatus. Everything seemed to happen at once. The protecting blue aura outside the ship waxed and waned perilously. And whenever it waned, there was a grinding, crumpling sound, as of steel plating being crushed like so much paper in a giant's grip. Heat, and the cindery pungence of scorched metal, filled the cabin.
Paul Arnold and Evan Harwich were frozen rigid with stunning, agonized paralysis, as strange energy snapped into their bodies. In the jolting, erratic motion of the wounded space ship, the two men were hurled from their feet like a pair of stiff wooden dolls.
Rolling and tumbling, his vision half blinded, Harwich saw the metal walls of the cabin buckle and redden with heat, as the craft floundered in that region of mysterious force and energy that heretofore had destroyed every ship that had attempted to reach Io.
There was another growl from the protecting apparatus. In a flash of electricity, the side of the bakelite case that housed the Gyon condenser exploded outward. At once the staggering Penetrator quit completely. Its last shred of protecting force was gone.
But that momentary hell had ended, too, with almost dazing suddenness. The grinding, snapping sounds had ceased. And there was only the heat and the stench of burnt metal, and the weightless sensation of free fall. That and the mocking stars.
Paul Arnold, panting, his face darkened and beaded with perspiration, clutched a bakelite handrail in one corner.