The altimeter of the Molly D showed ninety-one miles. Lieutenant Commander Mardonell made the decisive comment about that: 'We've come down about nine miles in sixty-eighty minutes. Since we're going forward as well as down, we'll strike the surface on a slant in ten hours.'

It was evident that it would take much longer than that to unscrew the thirty-five feet of thread on the lock-door, at one foot per hour.

Hewitt considered the situation angrily. He still thought of this whole boarding problem as a minor affair, as an irritation. 'We'll have to burn in or use a big drill,' he said. 'Cut through the wall.'

He radioed for one to be sent ahead. But even with the full authority of the Space Patrol behind him, two and a half hours went by before it was in position, Hewitt gave the order to start the powerful drill motor. He left instructions: 'Call me when we're about to penetrate.'

He had been progressively aware of exhaustion, as much mental as physical. He retreated to one of the ship's bunks and lay down.

He slept tensely, expecting to be called any moment. He turned and twisted, and, during his wakeful periods, his mind was wholly on the problem of what he would do when he got inside the ship.

He awoke suddenly and saw by his watch that more than five hours had gone by. He dressed with a sense of disaster. He was met by Mardonell. The Space Patrol officer said, 'I didn't call you, Mr. Hewitt, because when it became apparent that we weren't going to get in, I contacted my headquarters. As a result we've been getting advice from some of the world's greatest scientists.' The man was quite pale, as he finished. 'I'm afraid it's no use. All the advice in the world hasn't helped that drill, and cutting torches did no good.'

'What do you mean?'

'Better go take a look.'

The drill was still turning as Hewitt approached. He ordered it shut off, and examined the metal wall of the Hope of Man. It had been penetrated – he measured it – to a depth of three quarters of a millimeter.

'But that's ridiculous,' Hewitt protested. 'That metal drilled easily enough six years ago when the ship was built.'

Mardonell said, 'We've had two extra drills brought up. Diamonds don't mean a thing to that metal.' He added, 'It's been calculated that she'll crash somewhere in the higher foothills of the Rockies. We've been able to pin it down pretty accurately, and people have been warned.'

Hewitt said, 'What about those aboard? What about-' He stopped. He had been intending to ask, 'What about the human race?' He didn't say it. That was a special madness of his own, which would only irritate other people.

Trembling, he walked over to a porthole of the rescue ship. He guessed they were about fifteen miles above the surface of Earth. Less than two hours before crashing.

When that time limit had dwindled to twenty minutes, Hewitt gave the order to cast off. The rescue ship withdrew slowly from the bigger host, climbing as she went. A little later, Hewitt stood watching with an awful, empty feeling, as the huge round ship made its first contact with Earth below, the side of a hill.

At just under a thousand miles an hour, horizontal velocity, it plowed through the soil, creating a cloud of dust. From where Hewitt and his men watched, no sound was audible, but the impact must have been terrific.

'That did it,' said Hewitt, swallowing. 'If anybody was alive aboard, they died at that moment.'

It needed no imagination to picture the colossal concussion. All human beings inside would now be bloody splotches against a floor, ceiling, or wall.

A moment later, the sound of the impact reached him. It arrived with all the power and sharpness of a sonic boom, and the salvage vessel itself shuddered with its blow. The noise was louder by far than he had anticipated.

Somebody shouted, 'She's through the hill!'

Hewitt said, 'My God!'

The small mountain, made of rock and packed soil, thicker than a score of ships like the Hope of Man, was sheared in two. Through a cloud of dust, Hewitt made out the round ship skimming the high valley beyond. She struck the valley floor, and once again, there was dust. The machine did not slow; showed no reaction to the impact.

It continued at undiminished speed on into the earth.

The dust cleared slowly. There was a hole, over twelve hundred feet in diameter, slanting into the far hillside. The hole began to collapse. Tons of rock crashed down from the upper lip of the cave.

The rescue ship had sunk to a point nearer the ground, and Hewitt heard plainly the thunder of the falling debris.

Rock and soil were still falling when a radio report arrived. A mountain had collapsed fifty miles away. There was a new valley, and somebody had been killed. Three small earthquakes had shaken the neighborhood.

For twenty minutes, the reports piled up. The land was uneasy. Fourteen more earthquakes were recorded. Two of them were the most violent ever recorded in the affected areas. Great fissures had appeared. The ground jumped and trembled. The last temblor had occurred four hundred miles from the first; and they all lined up with the course of the Hope of Man.

Abruptly, there came an electrifying message. The round ship had emerged in the desert, and was beginning to climb upward on a long, swift shallow slant.

Less than three hours later, the salvage ship was again clinging to the side of the larger machine. Its huge magnets twisted stubbornly at the great lock-door. To the half-dozen government scientists who had come aboard, Hewitt said, 'It took an hour to turn it one foot. It shouldn't take more than thirty-five hours to turn it thirty-five feet. Then, of course, we have the inner door, but that's a different problem.' He broke off. 'Gentlemen, shall we discuss the fantastic thing that has happened?'

The discussion that followed arrived at no conclusion.

Hewitt said, 'That does it!' The outer door had been open for some while, and now, through the thick asbesglas, they watched the huge magnet make its final turn on the inner door. As they waited behind the transparent barrier, a thick metal arm was poked into the airlock, and shoved at the door. After straining with it for several seconds, its operator turned and glanced at Hewitt. The latter turned on his walkie-talkie.

'Come on back inside the ship. We'll put some air pressure in there. That'll open the door.'

He had to fight to keep his anger out of his voice. The outer door had opened without trouble, once all the turns had been made. There seemed no reason why the inner door should not respond in the same way. The Hope of Man was persisting in being recalcitrant.

The captain of the salvage vessel looked doubtful when Hewitt transmitted the order to him. 'If she's stuck,' he objected, 'you never can tell just how much pressure it'll take to open her. Don't forget we're holding the two ships together with magnets. It wouldn't take much to push them apart.'

Hewitt frowned over that. He said finally, 'Maybe it won't take a great deal. And if we do get pushed apart, well, we'll just have to add more magnets.' He added swiftly, 'Or maybe we can build a bulkhead into the lock itself, join the two ships with a steel framework.'

It was decided to try a gradual increase in air pressure. Presently, Hewitt watched the pressure gauge as it slowly crept up. It registered in pounds and atmospheres. At a fraction over ninety-one atmospheres, the pressure started rapidly down. It went down to eighty-six in a few seconds, then steadied, and began to creep up again. The captain barked an order to the engine room, and the gauge stopped rising. The man turned to Hewitt.

'Well, that's it. At ninety-one atmospheres, the rubber lining began to lose air, and didn't seal up again till the pressure went down.'