"Jed! Have you got into that engine room yet? For cripes sake, Jed, we're falling." That was Nielson, on the bridge. He sounded frantic. Sixteen feet the first second, then thirty-two, then sixty-four. They had miles to fall, but their rate of fall progressed geometrically. They had spent many minutes fighting their way through the air tight doors. One hundred and twenty-eight feet the fourth second. Jed's mind was racing. No, by thunder, that was acceleration under an earth gravity. They didn't know the gravity here. It might be less. It might be more. Ron Val had run forward and was kneeling beside Sarkoff. "Let them go," Hargraves said roughly. "Ron Val, you check the drivers. You--" Swiftly he assigned them tasks, reserving the control panel for himself. * * * * * They were specialists. Noble, the blond youth, frantically examining the atomics, was a bio-chemist. Ushur, the powerfully built man who had stood at Ron Val's right hand on the negatron, was an archeologist. They were engineers now. They had to be. "Nothing seems to be wrong here." That was Ron Val, from the drivers. "The atomics are working." That was Noble reporting. "Then what the hell is wrong?" At the control panel, Hargraves saw what was wrong. The damned controls were automatic, with temperature and air pressure cut-offs. When the air had gone from the engine room, that meant something was wrong. The controls had automatically cut off the drivers. The ship had stopped moving. A manual control was provided. Hargraves shoved the switch home. An oil-immersed control thudded. The loafing giants grunted as the lash struck them, roared with pain as they got hastily to work on their treadmill. The ship moved forward. "We're moving!" That was Red Nielson shouting. The controls on the bridge were responding now. "I'm going to burn a hole in space getting us away from here." "No!" said Hargraves. "What?" There was incredulous doubt in Nielson's voice. "That damned sphere came from this planet." "Can't help it. We've got to land." "Land here, now!" "There's a hole as big as the side of a house in the ship. No air in the engine room. Without air, we can't control the temperature. If we go into space, the engine room temperature will drop almost to absolute zero. These drivers are not designed to work in that temperature, and they won't work in it. We have to land and repair the ship before we dare go into space." "But--" "We land here!" There was a split second of silence. "Okay, Jed," Nielson said. "But if we run into another of those spheres--" "We'll know what to do about it. Ron Val. Ushur. Back to the bridge and man the negatron. If you see anything that even looks suspicious, beam it." Ron Val and Usher dived through the door that led forward. "Stern observation post. Are you alive back there?" "We heard you, Jed. We're alive all right." Back of the engine room, tucked away in the stern, was another negatron.