In a short while Ganymede and Callisto would be moving around on the far side of Jupiter and that might help. Everything counted so much now.
The dial was down to two miles a second and there it hung. Hung and stayed. Russ watched it with narrowed eyes. By this time Craven certainly would have given up much hope of help from Jupiter. If the big planet couldn't have helped him before, it certainly couldn't now. In another hour or two Earth would transit the Sun and that would cut down the radiant energy to some degree. But in the meantime Craven was loading his photo-cells and accumulators, was laying up a power reserve. As a last desperate resort he would use that power, in a final attempt to break away from the Invincible.
Russ waited for that attempt. There was nothing that could be done about it. The engines were developing every watt of power that could be urged out of them. If Craven had the power to break away, he would break away… that was all there would be to it.
An hour passed and the needle crept up a fraction of a point. Russ was still watching the dial, his mind foggy with concentration.
* * *
Suddenly the Invincible shuddered and seemed to totter in space, as if something, some mighty force, had struck the ship a terrific blow. The needle swung swiftly backward, reached one mile a second, dipped to half a mile.
Russ sat bolt upright, holding his breath, his teeth clenched with death grip upon the pipe-stem.
Craven had blasted with everything he had! He had used every last trickle of power in the accumulators… all the power he had been storing up.
Russ leaped from the chair and raced to the periscopic mirror. Stooping, he stared into it. Far beck in space, like a silver bauble, swung Craven's ship. It swung back and forth in space, like a mighty, cosmic pendulum. Breathlessly he watched. The ship was still in the grip of the space field!
"Greg,” he shouted, “we've got him!"