Chapter FIVE: Thirteen Minutes

They were soon back to the spaceship, and the search was at an end. For many days, two airships had searched both sides of the mountain and beyond. Vegetation had been cleared all around the ship for a distance of a hundred yards.

The spaceship was entirely surrounded with a network of metal hawsers which secured it to the ground against the mighty pull of the helium.

Entrance was gained to the ship by means of a helium lock.

With the return of the four machine men, no further time was lost. They were to make one supreme effort. Success or failure hung in the balance. Failure meant a flaming death when the nova struck Ajiat in its swelling glare.

"Every one of us must be securely fastened to a part of the ship," 744U-21 told them. "Our rise will be very sudden."

The fateful moment arrived. Several machine men made a last minute inspection of the hawsers holding the ship. By a specially arranged device, they were to be cast off simultaneously. When all was ready, the hawsers were loosed.

Like a shot out of a gun, the spaceship darted skyward, accelerating rapidly as the helium sought a natural level aided by the power releases of the spaceship. The climb was so rapid as to leave the machine men dizzy.

Eight Zoromes sat securely fastened near the ship's controls, and the first one who recovered his mental balance forced the super-resisters into action.

Night, with its flaming stars, replaced daylight, yet the noonday sun still shone upon them. They had cleared the atmosphere and were in space--but were far from being free of Ajiat. Their battle with the planet's mighty attraction had just begun.

They were forced to accept one discouraging fact with fatalism. They were heading off Ajiat straight for the sun which was shortly to explode! To have waited for Ajiat to rotate would have lost for them more precious time.

In space, they still maintained the speed of their initial rise, yet they realized that their speed must be increased if they were to win free of the giant world.

In suspense, they watched the speed gauges and waited. 20R-654 gave the ship every advantage he had learned in his long career of space navigation.

Their speed gradually increased, yet dangerously slow in acceleration even though they were winning free. The nova would spread with the speed of light and catch them in their battle against the strong gravity of Ajiat! In free space, the flight of the spaceship exceeded that of light several times over, but within the grip of Ajiat their speed was appallingly small. They were gaining more speed and were now sure of escaping Ajiat, but if the computations were correct they knew they would not escape the nova.

They were heading straight for the sun and dared not wheel in another direction until they were free of Ajiat's attraction.

The remaining hours fled. Minutes were left.

The machine men knew that a respite of thirteen minutes would be granted them from the time the explosion took place on the sun until the bright, hot flare of light reached them. The flaming gases to follow would reach Ajiat about a day and a half later.

They kept onward until it was agreed that with the little time left them they might turn at an angle of forty-five degrees from their course, then gradually turn this angle into a curve away from both the sun and the orbital course of Ajiat. They were speeding upon this curve when Professor Jameson announced that the meteoric mass they had passed in space before coming to Ajiat was probably, at that moment, hurling its provocative bulk into the sun.

"We shall not see the nova until it is upon us," he said, "for it travels with the speed of light. That is what adds to the uncertainty of our calculations, for there is just a possibility that a smaller body in this system, of which we know so little, might have bent the course or slowed the speed of the meteoric mass. Unless such a long chance has occurred, we have only thirteen minutes before the nova reaches us."

In the estimated time left, they reached the end of their curve and straightened out on a tangent from the sun and Ajiat. They were rapidly approaching the speed of light and safety when the ship was suddenly enveloped by a blinding glare.

"The nova!"

"It has overtaken us!"

Nothing could be seen outside but that awful brilliance. The sides of the ship grew hot. A terrific explosion rocked the ship in its flight and threw the machine men staggering against each other. One of the attached helium tanks had overheated and burst. Another report jarred the ship and was followed by several more concussions.

"Eject the helium from the ship!" 744U-21 directed. "We must have a vacuum!"

The order was quickly executed, and the helium spurted from the vents opened for its release. The hull of the spaceship grew hotter. That side facing the sun turned a lurid crimson.

The speed of the ship picked up rapidly as the malign power of Ajiat grew less. Soon, they were in free space, yet the hull of the ship grew hotter, and the terrible light which had swallowed them, remained intense.

The speed of the ship crept up to the speed of light, then passed and exceeded it. At that rate, the machine men hoped to outrace the dazzling hell which had closed upon them.

The sunward side of the ship waxed white hot, and metal plates were rapidly fastened over this danger zone, the plates becoming red hot in turn.

There also existed a vague fear among many that they were not heading directly out of the nova. The shock of the exploding helium tanks had made the proximity detectors perform queer antics. Meanwhile, their speed increased.

The spaceship suddenly shot out of the nova and into the darkness of space.

"We have outsped the nova!" Professor Jameson exclaimed. "Its light has not yet reached this far. We are looking at the sun and at Ajiat as they were just before the nova took place."

Nor did the machine men again see the nova until they were far beyond the doomed system of planets and the estimated limits of the nova's spread.

Each planet, when overtaken, glowed brilliantly. The sun swelled and grew so large that at that far distance they could not bear to look upon it except with veiled lenses.

"The nova is now reaching a point where it overtook us in the spaceship," said the professor.

They watched until they saw the nova reach its maximum proportions. A hotter and more compact globe of gases was spreading gradually from the sun, and the machine men lingered in the vicinity and closely approached the outermost limits of the mammoth spectacle until they saw the inner planets reached by the spreading gases. These, they knew, were in the state of volcanic eruption, their oceans turning to dense, vaporous envelopes.

The light had ended all life in the system, and now the slower moving gases were completing the destruction. They saw smaller satellites of the planets explode into myriad fragments, their lesser bulk lacking the resistance of larger companions. The spectacle was grand--yet terrible.

"Millions of light years away, this astronomic catastrophe will be visible," Professor Jameson philosophized, "and millions of years from now peoples on the planets which will witness it shall look upon a new star swelling into sudden brilliance for a brief period, and they will wonder."