"But why?" Harwich growled in momentary confusion. "Why should Bayley want to get rid of you?"
It was almost a silly question, as Harwich realized at once; but now Paul was answering it.
"It's simple," said the youth. "Bayley financed me after Dad was killed—yes. He watched my experiments and tests and studied my apparatus. He has a pretty keen mind. With me out of the way, no one but himself will know just how the Penetrator works! He can fix up another ship and come to Io himself without any competition! Anything he learns or discovers on the Forbidden Moon will be his alone! Or so he thinks, anyway."
It was too clear now! Evan Harwich knew that he and the boy were tumbling helplessly into the maw of hell now. In a useless, derelict ship they were falling toward the Forbidden Moon! They were already within the gates of unholy mystery! Death seemed very close. Yet the cold anger that hissed in the patrol pilot's brain, made him determined to live, somehow, for revenge!
"We'll be smashed if we stay in the ship, Paul," he said fiercely. "So we've got to jump for it with our safety equipment."
Quickly and more smoothly than did the youth, for he was well-trained, Harwich got into his space armor. Next he donned two massive packs, one on his chest and one on his back.
The exit door of the cabin was jammed, but with his pistol the patrol pilot fired an explosive bullet into its hinges.
A second afterward, Arnold and Harwich crept through the rent, while escaping air puffed out around them. They leaped into the emptiness almost together. With the heat-warped wreck of the gallant old RQ257 falling beside them, they continued their plummeting descent. There were still almost a thousand miles to go, for the distance between Io itself, and the gigantic energy envelope that surrounded it, was perhaps three thousand miles.
Down and down, with only regulation spacemen's emergency equipment to rely on to avert being crushed on those greyish hills and deserts, rushing nearer and nearer. Even a thousand miles did not take many moments at that terrific speed.