The Metal Moon, Everett C. Smith and Roman Frederick Starzl [best way to read e books .TXT] 📗

the shifting vista. A moment later; "It's a close squeeze. See there, past the horizon—a prominence?"

It was like a white plume, this jet of vapor thrown far into space. Not uncommon in Jupiter's turbulent atmosphere. But it was bright, dazzling! That meant they were not far from the sunlight!

"Pull away!" the fat mathematician shouted. "We have to take a chance!" Instantly Sine reversed the lever. Everyone grasped handholds as the ship backed out of the pit. Now they could see the vast ruin they had wrought. Sine gave her all the speed he dared, for the sun, for home!

The great ruin was slowly turning, and in a few minutes they saw again the darker shadow that was the fighting patrol ship, still clamped to her side. At the same instant the dull red pinpoint winked on. The Jovians had sighted them again! In a few minutes the hull was getting uncomfortably warm.

Lents laid down his pad.

"They will crash!" he declared. "But they have an hour, the fools! Instead of trying to burn us why don't they get into their space suits and free themselves?"

Jan, resting on the bench, shook his shaggy head.

"They are a great people, stupid but great. They will try to punish us till they die."

The wreckage drifted closer and closer to Jupiter, and still the red beam played steadily on the fleeing prisoners' ship. The distance had become so great that it could only be seen through an old telescope that the prisoners had somehow procured. But the prisoners were gasping. Their hull was cherry-red on the outside, and still heating. A few more minutes and the heat would be unbearable.

"They are getting closer—closer—they are in the sunlight. Now I can see better. I believe they will skip by—no! They've dived into the vapor! They're out again. Skipped out like a flat stone on water. Sinking again—almost over the horizon. Gone, I guess. Whew, it's hot!"

They were accelerating so fast that they had to turn on the interior gravity buttons to equalize the pressure on their bodies. Behind lay the vast, fog-bound planet of Jupiter. Ahead was the beautiful sun. And somewhere beyond, and still invisible, Earth the lovely, the green, the Mother of the human race!

THE END End of Project Gutenberg's The Metal Moon, by Everett C. Smith and R.F. Starzl