A neat round blot against the silver mist of stars, it was now fully two degrees across.
At first it seemed featureless, but a dull orange spark came against it as I looked, creeping toward its center.
The orange point grew brighter, yellower, whiter.
Suddenly the bubble changed—I suppose because of some optical or psychological effect.
No longer a bubble, it was suddenly a wide black funnel.
That white star fell fast down its midnight pit, down into Nowhere.
We dropped after it.
Turning giddy with my sense of that wild and helpless fall, I clutched a hand-rail desperately.
“See that, Captain!”
Ken Star’s husky voice seemed at first to come from far away.
I had to close my eyes and catch my breath before I could release my sweaty grasp on that cold rail and follow him to the electronic telescope.
“See that light?” he was calling.
“That’s your mutineers.
They’ve been shot to junk and caught in that sterilizing field—I saw the puff of gas when their fuel exploded.
Now the wreck is trapped in a more intense gravitic field—”
Breathlessly, he interrupted himself.
“Here!
Come take a look!”
I joined him in front of the green-glowing screen.
That black circle filled half of it—still a monstrous funnel to my eyes, so dark and deep that I shrank away from it, dizzy and shivering.
The wreckage of the rocket was a hot bright point, toppling down its bottomless throat.
Now I found something else—four fainter points, spaced outside the circle.
“Those objects—”
“Can you get the ‘scope on one of them, with a higher power?”
Breathing even and hard to still the tremor of my hands, I brought one of those four points to the center of the screen.
I turned up the power.
The point swelled. It became a greenish blur.
Out of the blur emerged another invader machine, the dark twin of Ken Star’s attacker.
“Four invaders,” Star rasped,
“Spaced in tetrahedral pattern around the bubble.
Guarding that gateway—perhaps helping create it.
I believe they have come from that more ancient space-time universe, to hold a bridgehead against us—”
“Huh!” My exclamation interrupted him.
“It’s gone!”
The screen was blankly greenish-black again.
Turning to the tran-site dome, I saw that the moving star was gone from that shadow-disk.
“The glowing wreck just went through the gate into—somewhere,” Star said.
“Without its light, we can’t see the invaders.
But they’re still there.”
“And Nowhere Near is still dropping toward them,” I said.
“That spot covered one degree when we first saw it, five hours ago. Now it covers two—which means we’ve come halfway. Without the position rockets, we’re falling faster.
I suppose we have three hours, maybe four.”
As helpless as Ketzler, I stared at his gaunt face.
“Commander, what can we do?”
Jetting nearer, he loomed tall in the crimson gloom.
“We do have a weapon,” he whispered at last.
“Humanity’s ultimate defense. A top secret thing—but you will have to know about it now.
Because I think we may be forced to use it.
Where is Lilith?”
“Still hi the hospital,” I said.