“But it’s the end for me, the end of my dream! And for Renn….”

“To me it means that it’s impossible to check up my work experimentally and make corrections — it means I cannot continue!”

“One mind is not enough. Ask the Council.”

‘‘Your ideas and your words are the Council’s decision given in advance. We have nothing to expect from them,” said Mven Mass softly.

“You’re right. The Council will refuse.”

“I shan’t ask you anything else. I feel guilty, Renn and I have put the heavy burden of decision upon you.”

“That is my duty as one older in experience. It is not your fault that the task seems magnificent and extremely dangerous. That is what upsets me so much, makes it hard to bear.”

Renn Bose was the first to suggest returning to the temporary dwellings of the expedition. The three downcast men plodded through the sand, each in his own way feeling the bitter sorrow of having to reject an experiment such as had never before been tried. Darr Veter cast occasional side glances at his companions and felt that it was harder for him than for them. There was a bold recklessness in his nature that he had had to fight against all his life. It made him something like an old-time brigand — why had he felt such joy and satisfaction in his mischievous battle with the bull? In his heart he was indignant, he was full of protest against a decision that was wise but not bold.

CHAPTER SIX

THE LEGEND OF THE BLUE SUNS

Dr. Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai, the biologist, dragged their heavy weight slowly towards him from the ship’s sick bay. Erg Noor went to meet them.

“Nisa?” “Alive, but….”

“Dying?”

“Not yet. She is totally paralysed. Her respiration is extraordinarily low. Her heart is functioning — one beat in a hundred seconds. It is not death but it is absolute collapse which may last a long, an indefinitely long time.”

“Is there any possibility that she may regain consciousness and suffer?” “None whatever.”

“Are you sure?” The look in the commander’s eyes was sharp and insistent, but the doctor was not at all put out. “Absolutely sure!”

Erg Noor looked inquiringly at the biologist. He nodded his affirmation.

“What do you intend to do?”

“Keep her in an even temperature, absolute repose and weak light. If the collapse does not progress… what does it matter… let her sleep till we reach Earth. Then she can go to the Institute of Nerve Currents. The injury is due to some form of current, her spacesuit was holed in three places. It is a good thing that she was scarcely breathing!”

“I noticed the holes and sealed them with my plaster,” said the biologist.

In silent gratitude Erg Noor squeezed his arm above the elbow.

“Only…” began Louma, “we’d better get her away from high gravitation as quickly as we can… and… at the same time there’s danger, not so much in the acceleration of the take-off as in the return to normal gravitation.”

“I see, you’re afraid the pulse will get even slower. But the heart is not a pendulum that accelerates its oscillations in a field of high gravitation, is it?”

“The rhythm of impulses in the organism, in general, follows the same laws. If the heartbeats slow down to, say, one in two hundred seconds, then the brain will not get a sufficient supply of blood, and….”

Erg Noor fell into such deep thought that he forgot that he was not alone: he suddenly came to himself and sighed deeply.

His companions waited patiently.

“Would it not be a way out if the organism were to be submitted to higher pressures in an atmosphere enriched with oxygen?” asked the commander cautiously, and by the satisfied smile of the faces of Louma Lasvy and Eon Thai he knew that the idea was the right one.

“Saturate the blood with the gas under increased pressure, good…. Of course, we must take precautions against thrombosis and — let her heart beat once in two hundred seconds, it will come right later.”

Eon’s smile showed his white teeth under a black moustache and gave his stern face a look of youthfulness and reckless merriment.

“The organism will remain paralysed but will live,” said Louma with relief. “Let’s go and get the chamber ready. I want to use the big silicolloid hood that we took for Zirda. We can get a floating armchair inside it to make a bed for her during the take-off. After acceleration ceases we can make her a proper bed.”

“As soon as you’re ready report to the control tower. We’re not staying here a minute longer than necessary… we’ve had enough of the darkness and weight of the black world!”

The crew hurried to their various sections of the ship, each of them struggling against excess weight as best he could.

The signals for the take-off resounded like a song of victory.

With feelings of such absolute relief as they had never before experienced the people of the expedition entrusted themselves to the soft embraces of the landing chairs. A take-off from a heavy planet is a difficult and dangerous undertaking. The acceleration necessary to escape its gravity would strain the very limit of human endurance and the slightest mistake on the part of the pilot might lead to the death of them all.

There was a deafening roar of the planet motors as Erg Noor directed the spaceship at a tangent to the horizon. The levers of the hydraulic chairs were pressed lower and lower under the influence of growing weight. In a moment the levers would reach the limit and then, under the pressure of acceleration the frail human bones might be broken as they would be on an anvil. The commander’s hands, lying on the buttons that controlled the ship’s machinery, were unbearably heavy. But his strong fingers were at work and Tantra, describing a huge, flattened arc, rose higher and higher out of thick darkness into the transparent blackness of infinity. Erg Noor kept his eyes fixed on the red line of the horizontal leveller — it wavered in its unstable equilibrium, indicating that the ship showed a tendency to stop its climb and travel on the downward arc. The heavy planet had still not given up its prisoner. Erg Noor decided to switch on the anameson motors whose power was sufficient to lift the spaceship from any planet. Their ringing vibration made the whole ship shudder. The red line rose about half an inch above the zero line. A little more….

Through the upper inspection periscope the commander saw that Tantra was covered with a fine layer of blue flame that flowed slowly towards the stern of the vessel. The atmosphere had been passed! In empty space vestigial electric currents, following the law of superconductivity, flowed along the vessel’s hull.

The stars had again become needles of light and Tantra, escaping, flew farther and farther from the dread planet. The burden of gravity decreased with every minute. The body became lighter and lighter, the artificial gravitation machine began to hum and after so many days under the pressure of the black planet terrestrial gravity seemed indescribably small. The people jumped up from their chairs. Ingrid, Louma and Eon performed intricate passages from a fantastic dance. The inevitable reaction, however, soon set in and the greater part of the crew fell into a brief sleep that gave temporary repose. Only Erg Noor, Pel Lynn, Pour Hyss and Louma Lasvy remained awake. The spaceship’s temporary course had to be worked out to avoid the belt of ice and meteoroids by describing an arc perpendicular to the plane of rotation of star T’s system. After this the ship could be brought up to its normal subphotonic speed and work could be begun on the computation of the real course.

The doctor kept watch over Nisa’s condition after the take-off and the return to normal terrestrial gravity. She was soon able to reassure all those who were awake by her report that the pulse had reached a constant of one beat in a hundred and ten seconds. This was not mortal as long as there was an excess supply of oxygen. Louma Lasvy proposed using a tiratron,21 an electronic cardiac exciter, and neurosecretory stimulators[19].