"Everything's all right!" he shouted excitedly.
Tolto, however, was listening anxiously. There was a sharp crackling at the stern, where, in a narrow space, the reaction motors provided the forward motive power. In moments of excitement he referred to himself in the third person. He did so now.
"Tolto's afraid that something's wrong! Smells hot, too!"
"Here, take the wheel!" Sime ordered. The explosions of the shells were becoming less dangerous; they were getting too far away.
Sime burned his hand opening the narrow door. The paint was already blistering off it. The trouble was immediately apparent. One of the integrator chambers, in which atomic hydrogen was integrated to form atomic iron and calcium (sometimes called the Michelson effect), had sprung a leak. The heat escaping into the little room was not the comparatively negligible heat of burning hydrogen, but the cosmic energy of matter in creation. Sime slammed the door. The radiated light was so intense that it stung even his hardened skin.
Looking through the rear range-finding periscope, he saw that they were about twenty miles from the fort. They had ceased firing.
"Won't be long, Tolto," he said, taking over the controls himself again, "before our tail's going to drop off. Got to make time."
It was, in fact, about ten minutes when, without warning, their nose dropped.
"Tail's gone!" Sime announced.