"What's wrong?" Jean asked anxiously, peered out, too. "Why, it's a tractor beam—coming from that bare asteroid!"
"Watch!" the Falcon said quietly.
The pale-green beam lanced like a misty cone from the rough surface of a craggy boulder that sprang upward from the asteroid like a towering skyscraper. The pocked, rubbled surface of the asteroid glittered metallically in the faint sun-glow, great rocky spires rearing fantastically, mountainous boulders perched in reckless confusion over the pitted surface of the ground.
Weight was almost instantly doubled in the ship, as the tractor beam caught the ship in its grip. Curt adjusted the gravity shield to counteract the beam's force on himself and Jean. The rockets had stopped their steady drumming, and the Falcon explained.
"It's a variation of the standard inertia-tractor beam. Energy of flight is nullified by the inertia beam, which neutralizes all rocket power. And the tractor beam is swinging us toward the asteroid."
Jean shivered. "It happened so fast!" she said slowly.
The seconds slipped by, and there was the sensation of falling. The cruiser swung more and more toward the great boulder, descending swiftly. There was no sound, only the steady dragging of gravity on the ship from the pale beam. Absently, the Falcon cleared the board before him, cutting all switches.
And then a giant hole flowed open in the top of the huge boulder, and the pirate ship was whisked into a slanting radi-lighted tunnel.
"Hollow!" Jean said. "So this is the Pirate's Base!" She frowned. "But if it is hollow, why doesn't gravitic stress rip it to pieces?"
The Falcon still peered from the port. "We use a neutron-weld invented by Schutler. Using the weld, the skin of the Base could be but a foot thick, and still would not rupture nor permit the atmosphere to leak."