Every limb and every tissue shrieked.
Even the cells of his brain itself, he felt, screamed protest at this consuming radiation. Every second he thought he had felt the ultimate agony, and every second the agony increased.
He was blind with pain.
Pain roared in his ears.
Red-hot needles of pain probed every fiber of his body.
But still he fought to keep the mastery of himself.
He stood rigid over the controls and drove the cruiser down.
Above the agony thundering in his ears, he heard the whine of the hard-pressed geodynes change again to harsh vibration.
That ugly snarl increased, until the whole ship shuddered to it.
It became terrific.
He thought it would break the very hull.
But the vibration ended suddenly. The ship was deathly still.
The geodynes had failed completely.
Only momentum was left, to carry them on through the radiation-wall.
In the new silence he heard Adam Ulnar screaming in the brig.
“Disintegration…” came the faint, hoarse rasp from Jay Kalam.
“We’re going—invisible!”
He saw, then, that the solid metal of the mechanisms about him was becoming weirdly and incredibly semi-transparent, as if about to dissolve completely in the glittering mist that swirled away from them, ever denser.
He looked at Jay Kalam, through the haze of shattered jewels, and saw a ghastly thing.
That shining spectre-shape was semi-transparent now, bones visible like shadows within misty outlines of flesh.
Fiery smoke swirling away from it.
It looked no longer human; it was grisly death, melting into nothingness.
Yet it still had consciousness, reason, will.
A sound whispered from it, dry and faint:
“Rockets!”
John Star knew that he was another dissolving ghost.
Every atom of his body flamed with unendurable pain.
Red agony blinded him, shrieked in his ears, froze his body in a final rigor.
Yet he moved, before it overcame him utterly.
He reached the rocket firing keys.
He was sprawled over the control board, the next he knew, weak and trembling.
His sick body was limp, dripping with sweat.
He dragged himself up, aware that his fearful, agonizing transparency was gone.
He saw Jay Kalam, faint and white; saw beyond him a few glistening diamond particles still floating in the air.
“The rockets,” breathed Jay Kalam, his voice weak, uncertain, yet gravely deliberate as ever.
“The rockets brought us through.”
“Through!”
It was a dry, hoarse croak.
“Inside the Belt?”
“Inside—and plunging toward the surface.”
He fought to recover a grip on himself.
“Then we must brake our velocity, before we smash!”
“Giles!” Jay Kalam called into the telephone.
“The geodynes———”
“Don’t bother me now!” wheezed the faint and plaintive protest.
“For poor old Giles is dying, dying!
Ah, the wicked agony of it!
And the generators are wrecked, burned up!
Destroyed by that fearful vibration!
They can never be repaired—not even by the rare and perfect skill of Giles Habibula.