The lean dark-haired pilot shrugged. "I haven't seen much of it yet. Instruments show that we aren't cracked—outer and inner hulls still holding pressure. Tremendous gravity, no atmosphere. Entire area slightly radio-active. Haven't had time to check the recording tapes yet. I blacked out about the same time you did."
Doc caught his lower lip between his white even teeth for a moment. Then he tilted himself out of the shock-chair and rolled the stiffness out of his broad shoulders. "Tapes first," he said.
Jon clipped another reel into the recorder and stopped the whirring of the one he wanted. He slipped it onto the reversing spindle, pulled out the tag-end inside and fed it into the slot. Then he tapped two cigarettes alight on his thumbnail, gave one to Doc and stepped back to watch.
The asteroid showed up with surprising suddenness out of the void that was deep space. Its outlines were blurry at first, but sharpened as the spotter focused on it. It was traveling at tremendous speed, for the star patterns behind it changed even as they watched. The metallic voice of the sound track came in now, recording the instrument readings.
"Ship's course Z-point RD 3784. Object's course Z-point AD 1892." The speaker droned on with data, speed of ship, computed speed of object, drive ratings. Then: "Collision course. Collision course. Repeating. Collision course."
The black mass of the asteroid shifted on the screen and momentarily went out of focus as the ship spun on its axis and the rear viewers took over. Then the scene was streaked with flame as the main jets put on full emergency deceleration.
The rest of the recording tape was nightmarish. The flaring of the jets stuttered—then stopped. The dispassionate mechanical voice of the speaker reported the main converter feed jammed, and almost instantly reported that auxiliary units were operating.
Doc shuddered reminiscently at this. He recalled the tortuous crawl through the tunnel into the converter room, the shoving of the screen ahead of him in the flickering blue glow of the room, the unjamming of the 'foolproof' feeding reel that had been installed especially for this exploration.
The twenty minutes it took had been enough. The ship lurched to the pull of this concentrated hulk of God-knew-what, and went into a tight orbit around the asteroid.
They were just too close. They came in lower and lower, and finally Jon threw on full power. Hobson's choice. Fall into the mass or kill themselves with high-G deceleration. Jon chose deceleration.