Chapter V

Ripon was still staring out the control room window at the disc of the Moon ahead of them. His voice came somberly as he spoke without turning around.

"What's the speed now?"

"Eleven hundred. Velocity of escape is twenty-five hundred."

"Y'know, Larry, it seems one of Fate's little ironies that the only hope of saving the people of Earth from the Gray Death lies with this creaking ship and her polyglot crew! Oh--I have no illusions about the forlornness of our hope! We have no right to get through. But I'm not entirely a fool, and I have a few aces in my sleeves. I guess it's time to try out my magnetron controls. Stand by to cut rocket motors!"

Ripon moved to several strange-looking control boxes that had been set up at one side of the room. Instrument dials glowed into light as he threw a switch, and there came a faint hum.

"These tubes are the Magnetron Oscillators," Ripon said. "These switches control the magnetic converters. This other bank governs the selectors."

"But I don't get the general principle," Larry said.

"It's simply a selective utilization of the lines of magnetic force that fill outer space. This ship is naturally para-magnetic, so that she is easily permeable by the lines of force. By charging the wires outside the hull I can make all or part of the ship diamagnetic. Furthermore, I can change its charge so that the lines will draw in either direction."

"I know enough of the general principles of magnetism to understand that," Larry said. "You can vary the direction of the effect, and perhaps vary the dynes. But...."

"This indicator shows the hysteresis loop, the lag of magnetic indication behind the magnetizing force at any particular time," Ripon continued. "The heart of my system is the group of selectors and amplifiers set up in the compartments directly below us. With them I can select the magnetic currents suited to our course, and amplify them till they move the ship along with them just as the lines of magnetic force move iron filings about a bar magnet. At least," he said with a sudden flash of his reckless smile, "that's what I think I can do. If not, we'll probably never be heard of again. You'd better hope I'm right, young feller!"

Ripon's craggy profile with its jutting beard was silhouetted against the moon as he bent over his dials and switches. Twice he checked them, then he lifted one hand.

"Ready--cut rockets!" he snapped. Larry threw over the lever of the engine room indicator, and the roar of the rockets abruptly ceased.

The sudden silence was strangely startling to ears that had become accustomed to that steady pounding astern. Running feet sounded in the passage as Colton came charging into the control room to find what had gone wrong. For a moment Larry had a sensation of falling, and then the _Sky Maid_ danced about like a leaf in a wind. He steadied himself by clinging to a stanchion and anxiously watched Ripon. The gaunt scientist was hunched above his control boards like a gnome, his hands leaping from switch to dial and back again at furious speed.

Then the motion abruptly ceased. The _Sky Maid_ became steady as a rock, with the bright disc of the Moon dead ahead through the forward port. There was a faint singing sound from one of the control boxes, but otherwise everything was so quiet and still that it seemed as though the ship lay motionless in space. Then Larry looked at the speed indicator, and saw the needle moving steadily upward. The _Sky Maid_ was shooting through the heavens at a speed faster than she had ever traveled when she was new and in good condition!

* * * * *

"Gentlemen," said Ripon, solemnly shaking hands with both Larry and Colton, "this is an historic moment! This is a prelude to that day when interplanetary travel becomes as commonplace as are rocket ship flights through the strathosphere nowadays! No longer will the name of Crispin Gillingwater Ripon be a thing of scorn and derision. And just wait till I get a chance to spit in the faces of some of those living fossils back at the National University...."

"If the ship holds together!" Larry said. Ripon sighed.

"You _would_ bring that up, young feller. But maybe our luck will hold good. At least this method of travel is less hard on an old craft than the steady strain of a rocket blast. If the ship holds together, we'll be on the Moon in forty-eight hours!"

Colton was grinning broadly as Ripon left the control room a minute later. The second officer gave the points of his mustache an added twist, and then rubbed his hands together.

"Looks like the old goat really came through with something after all," he said. Larry looked at him grimly. For all Ripon's eccentricities, he was an able man in a great many things. It annoyed Larry to hear somebody like Colton, a confessed thief and an indifferent officer, speak of him in quite that tone of disrespect.

"Don't speak of Doc Ripon in that way when you're with me, Colton!" he snapped. The other man's thin mouth twisted in a sneer.

"Trying to go high hat on me, Gibson? You're no better than I am."

"If we go into that I'm likely to throw you through the bulkhead," Larry said evenly. "So we'll just let it go that I have some gratitude and respect for the man who picked me up out of the gutter--even if you haven't. Now clear out of here till it's time for you to take over the watch."

For two days and nights the _Sky Maid_ moved steadily forward on her way. There was, of course, neither day nor night in the airless emptiness of outer space, but they kept routine hours on board. The whole atmosphere of the ship had brightened and changed since Ripon's utilization of magnetic force had proven practical. Even the slovenly crew went around with their shoulders straighter. The feeling of gloom and failure had been succeeded by one of optimism. Now the talk was of whether or not they would really get the desired radium salts on the Moon, and of what reward they would all receive when they got back to Earth. The watch off duty started a poker game based on notes against the rewards they all expected to get.

Ahead of the _Sky Maid_, the Moon was now a vast disc that filled half the sky when seen from the control room ports. The bigger peaks and craters were visible to the naked eye now. Back in the after observation room, the dwindling but still vast profile of Earth had taken on a strange and unfamiliar appearance. It was a lonely feeling, to be so far from that friendly planet. Larry wondered how things were now going there, and what had caused the spread of the Gray Death in the first place. Probably a virus brought in on a meteor from some unknown and unhealthy planet.

The hope of mankind resting within her rusty hull, the _Sky Maid_ slogged onward. By Earthly standards she was moving at a terrific speed, but compared with the velocity of heavenly bodies and the vastness of interplanetary space she crawled slowly across a small corner of the solar system.