The bald-headed scientist pulled himself to the ampliscope. But it was possible to see the object through the ports now, quite plainly. It was black, cylindrical, glinting dully in the sun's light. The space ship was tumbling end over end, lazily, bringing the thing into view first at one port—then another.
"No acceleration!" Kass reported, amazement mingling with hope. "Same speed—we may still hit—but no evidence of gravity. We're falling toward it on momentum alone!"
Lents' brown eyes twinkled with perplexity in their pits of fat.
"The force, whatever it is, doesn't seem like anything in nature. But if we're traveling on momentum alone we can pull away with our emergency rockets—though I hate to waste the fuel."
Sine leaped to the rocket controls. "Grab handholds!" he snapped over his shoulder. The men rolled into the padded niches provided for that purpose. Sine's niche was so placed that it would not be necessary to lift a hand against the tremendous pressure of rocket acceleration. A lateral swing of the lever along its quadrant operated the rockets.
"Oof!" came a smothered exclamation from Lents as the ship seemed to pause, to leap forward in space again. The star-studded heavens as seen through the ports were hidden by a curtain of flame, electric blue and as stiff seeming as a steel bar—the trail of the forward rockets.
For some minutes there was no sound save the subdued thunder of the hull as it trembled under the tug of the rockets. Then a light flashed redly and a gong sounded. The signal that meant, "fuel half gone." Sine shut off the power, crawled out stiffly. His first glance out of a port showed that they were still falling toward the mysterious cylindrical space wanderer.
Kass wiped the sweat from his bald head.
"No use wasting any more effort," he said hoarsely. "That thing is a space ship, and there are men in it. The force they have been using on us is some kind of gravity beam—probably it's also their means of space propulsion. They mean to capture us, no doubt——"