Islands of Space

think we ought to go directly from here. If we did, we'd have to do a lot of backtracking to get back to this dead star. I suggest we go back t

es, that will give us a wider choice of star

the green image of the white dwarf fade and then suddenly flare up and become

They stopped every light century until they reached a point where the s

he galaxy they went, out

nto space, at an angle to this galaxy, and see if we can get both g

won't count back on Earth, anyway." Since they would travel in

ght years per second. The hours dragged heavily, as they had when they were coming in, and Arcot remained alone on

he chronometer on the wall-he had slept twelve hours! They had gone beyond the million l

middle of the library-exactly in the middle,

ally. "Can't even keep awake when all you have to do is sit here and see that we don't run into anything.

rfectly quiet here except for your deep-toned, musical snores that I c

ay right there while I call the others and we d

and left to w

heir way to wake up Fuller, when suddenly the air of the ship crackled

other. They knew that Arcot was still floati

're turning around!" came Arcot'

ur gravities of acceleration! Unable to walk, they could only crawl lab

ooked around for a means of doing so. Near him, floating in the air, was the book he had been reading, but it was out

it violently in the air. He developed a velocity of about two inches a second-not very

door, out into the corridor and into the control room

power off. Both of the men, laboring under more than eight hundred pounds of weight, were suddenly wei

red down to an earnest demand to know how in the

n a little power; I fell under the influence of the we

nded. "The truth! Ho

t pushed my

how did you get hold

of air and threw it awa

and how did you

r and threw it away

rn. Arcot was going to keep

rol room, where I belong, and you are not in the obser

over the intercom. "Let's move on a bit more, Arcot. We still can't get both galaxies

eantime, and he wanted to know why they

have the ones we took coming in; w

rain drive once more, and t

t, the ship rocked as though it had been struck violently! The air was a snapping inferno of shooting sparks, and there came the sharp crash of the suddenly volatilized silver bar that w

they had been burned in a doze

followed them, the Ancient Mariner seemed unchanged. Aro

Arcot cried. "It may be a wanderi

eightless through space. Then Arcot snapped off the lights of the contro

l red glow, so dim it was scarcely visi

"A dead star, directly ahead of

straight toward

we from it?"

distance recorded on the meteor detector. "ARCOT! FOR HEAVEN'S

the power. I'm going to try for an orbit around it. We'll fall toward it and give the ship all the accele

ontrol chairs, prepared themsel

e carried them past the star. But they had come in on the space drive, and had gotten fairly close before the gravitational field had drained the power from the main coi

ough velocity to get into an elliptical o

ard under an additional five and a half gravities of acceleration. Their velocity had been five thousan

d; they could only feel the five and a half gravities of the molecular drive. Had they been

But he knew that the only hope they had was to get the ship in a closed ellipse around the star, and a closed ellipse meant that they wo

ot said: "I think we'll make an orbit, all right, but we'r

as Arcot made swift movements with the controls, doing all he

n their chairs almost as well as the straps of the antiacceleration units that boun

th-I mean, what in Space is that thing? We're within only a few hundred miles,

olume of the star depends less and less on its temperature. In a dwarf with the mass of the sun, the temperature effect

star can exist with a volume greater than about one and a half times the mass of the sun-as the mass increases and the pressure goes up, the star shrinks in volume b

t is when the star has reached the density of a neutron

kilometers-or less than twe

l juggling to get an orbit which A

at the sky above them and shouted: "S

treaks of light across the sky. One of them was brighter than the rest, a bright white streak. The stre

hat wide streak is the one we just left.

"We're less than twenty miles from the center of that thing! We're almost exactly thirty kilometers from its center,

s every second; our 'year' is three milliseconds long! Our or

at about a fifth of

n this orbit?"

at I don't see how we'll ever break free. We can't pul

ing under all that gravity; l

instant to fall down to the surface of that thing there." He looked down at their inert, but t

ase; as a result, we'd bounce right back out again. The magnitude of the force required to make us fall into that sun is appalling! The gravitational pull on us now amounts to abo

ce to make us either fall into

million tons of mass. As we get farther out, our weight will decrease as the gravitational attrac

e need at least four tons to spare, and we only started out with twenty. We simply haven't got fuel enough to break loos

ed to sleep on the problem, as Arcot had suggested, but it was difficult to relax. They were physically tired; they h

ifth the time they would have at one gravity, but their brains were still wi

last sl