Chapter II: Forced Landing!

Following hours of fitful slumber during which he dreamed of all the perils and catastrophes that could possibly bedevil a space-ship, Verger awoke with a start which would have bounced him out of his hammock had he not taken the precaution of zipping himself in. More than ever before, a premonition of impending disaster crowded into his worried mind.

Squeezing a handful of water from a drinking tube, he quickly washed his hands and face, hurried to the control room and strapped himself into the starboard control seat.

"Shall I relieve you, Al?" he panted.

LeDoux glanced at the chronometer and said, "No, thanks, Tim. I still have forty-seven minutes left of my shift." Then, seeming to sense a note of tension in his friend's voice, he exclaimed, "What's the matter, old man?"

"Oh, nothing," Verger assured him. "You know, of course, that I never interfere with the work of another flyer. No dual-seat piloting for me."

"For Pete's sake, spill it!" Alphonse cried. "What's wrong with the way I'm running this ash-can?"

"If you don't mind my saying so, I think you're shooting too darn close to Callisto."

"Maybe so," LeDoux conceded. "We're several hours behind our schedule. I figured I might make it up by using the full force of Jupiter's gravitational pull. That meant shaving a slice out of Callisto's stratosphere, but we have plenty of momentum to carry us past the satellite without any risk."

"Let's hope so," was Verger's pessimistic response. "I'd hate to make a forced landing on Callisto."

"Why?" LeDoux wanted to know. "Isn't Callisto inhabited?"

"Sure, it's inhabited. That's the trouble. The natives of Callisto are unquestionably the most fearful and the most ruthless fiends in the known universe."

"What's so fearful about them?" his companion asked.

"Well, for one thing, they're too blamed curious."

"Curious?" LeDoux questioned. "Is that such a terrible crime?"

"It is when it is carried to extremes, like they do. Maybe you haven't heard, but the Callisto boys have an unpleasant habit of grabbing every human being they can get hold of, merely for the playful purpose of cutting them open to find out what makes them tick. Vivisection, I guess you'd call it."

"Nice people!" was LeDoux's comment.

"Yeah, and the worst of it is that there's nothing we humans can do about it. No weapon known to man can harm them. They shed lethal rays like a duck sheds water. Bullets from old-fashioned machine guns go right through them without apparent damage. I ought to know because--" Leaving his sentence suspended in space, Verger exclaimed, "Leaping Luna! What's that?"

Staring through the thick, super-transparent window in the direction which the captain indicated, LeDoux saw a weird, lavender-hued beam shoot out from the surface of Callisto. For two or three tense seconds it whipped around in a spiral path which centered the beam right on the nose of the Goddard, bathing the craft with its throbbing, blinding glare.

There was a jolt which nearly snapped the strong bands of webbing which strapped the two men into their control seats. Followed then that horrible, oppressive feeling of excessive weight, which told the experienced space-pilots that their velocity was being decelerated rapidly--far more rapidly than any sensible pilot would dare to retard his flight by means of braking rockets.

Like a swimmer trying to fight his way out of the clutches of a dangerous riptide, LeDoux strove to steer the Goddard diagonally across the powerful current of quivering, menacing energy, but his attempts to maneuver the rocket-ship out of the beam's perilous influence were fruitless.

With inexorable power, the beam seemed to be sucking the space-ship toward the surface of the satellite, while at the same time it was retarding the Goddard's terrific speed.

* * * * *

Closer and closer loomed the enormous globe of Callisto, until it blotted out everything else. Finally, with an almost imperceptible jar, the rocket-ship pancaked into a nest of grotesque vegetation which clothed the perilous satellite.

Verger, who had closed his eyes to guard himself against blindness, opened them just in time to see a preposterous object thrust itself out of an enormous hole only a few feet away, and wrap itself about the space-ship. It was not a snake, nor was it exactly similar to the tentacle of a large cephalopodous animal. There was something about its creepy, slithering movements which suggested the pseudopodia of an amoebean organism, if one could stretch one's imagination sufficiently to conceive of an amoeba of such cosmic size.

Tearing his fascinated gaze away from this horrible object, which seemed to be holding the space-ship imprisoned in its ominous embrace, Verger unbuckled the straps of his control seat and hurried back to the women's quarters. Fortunately, all the girls had been zipped snugly in their spring-braced hammocks at the moment when the beam had struck the space-ship. Although they were all somewhat shaken and badly frightened, none of them was seriously injured.