Ahead of him, Alan saw Haddix's form suddenly lift from the hull of the spaceship and rocket up toward the warp-station. Alan followed him, feeling utterly no sensation of movement after the initial acceleration.
A featureless black globe several hundred yards in diameter, the warp station floated toward them. Following Haddix's lead, Alan alighted on his hands, cutting his shoulder jets and cart-wheeling into an upright position. The warp-station, he knew, was merely a terminal point for the space-warp itself. Untended, it housed the tremendous atomic power plant which unfolded the water on the Martian end of the warp from sub-space to normal space.
"As you can see," Haddix said, "the station is working. But there's no water."
Alan could feel the pulsing of great machinery underfoot. But the black tube of sub-space, yawning awesomely half a hundred feet to his left, was empty.
"Want to take a look?" Haddix demanded.
Alan nodded through the glassite helmet of his space suit, then fell into dragging, magnetized step beside Haddix. Soon they approached the lip of the sub-space tube, where sub-space intersected normal space in a fifty foot wide channel.
"It doesn't look dangerous," Alan said.
"For water, it's not. The pressure would crush a man to jelly."
Alan peered over the edge. Below him perhaps a dozen feet, a white line had been painted. Over it in stark white letters was the word CAUTION. Beyond that point, apparently, the actual space-warp began. "Look out!" Alan shouted. "What are you trying to do?"