"I get you!" The fat scientist puffed out his cheeks with excitement. "Have to estimate the mass first." He picked up a stylus from the astrogator's table, worked furiously on a tablet. Kass and Jan watched apprehensively. The Pleasure Bubble, with its freight of the dead, was hurrying remorselessly to its rendezvous with the sunlight.
"Whoops!" Lents threw his tablet into the air in extravagant triumph. "She'll do!"
"Stations!" shouted Jan, in his curious strained voice, and men rushed eagerly to their posts, still hazy as to their object but cheered by the knowledge that there was hope after all.
Then began one of the strangest duels in the history of the solar system. Setting the nose of their vessel against the gigantic metal satellite, they directed the stern gravity buttons against a distant star, and applied full force to slow the sphere in its orbit.
The forces liberated were terrific. The sphere's tough skin, three inches thick, buckled and bent inward until the ship was almost buried in a pit of its own creation. Jan stood hunched over the activator lever like a great spider, ready to throw it into neutral at the first sign of an actual rupture, which would send them crashing through the internal cells and girders of the sphere.
"She's folding up like a squeezed orange peeling!" Kass muttered, running his hand over his bald head.
"Built to withstand internal pressure—nothing like this," Jan gasped. "Stout ship, this!" he added a moment later. "We thought we might have to ram our way out."
She was indeed a stout ship—this vessel of escape. Though she shivered and groaned, she gave no indication of failure.
"Wonder if the others are pushing against us!" Kass suddenly thought of another possibility.
"We—can—outpush 'em." Jan gasped. "Got to sit down. Here you take it!" Sine stepped into his place. Vague shocks and noises were transmitted to them through the hull. The huge sphere was collapsing progressively.