Momentum used up, earth's gravity would again assume control. The rocket would slip back, tail first, slowly, slowly, then faster and faster, beginning the long, final plunge to the ground. CHAPTER XVIII Out of Control! Rick came back to painful consciousness. He realized that the acceleration was at an end. The torture of G forces was over, and whatever happened from here on wouldn't compare with the past few minutes. He tried to sit up, and strained muscles reacted. He groaned with pain and lay down again. Suddenly he realized he was no longer on the floor! He hung in the air, as though by some weird magic, and tried to figure out what had happened to him. Of course he was weightless! The rocket was now in free flight, its inertia counteracting gravitational pull. He would continue weightless until gravity took over again. [Illustration: _Rick hung in the air, as though suspended by some weird magic_] It was comfortable, after the racking acceleration. He could have gone to sleep easily, and almost did. Then the spacemonk chirruped at him uneasily. The marmoset was feeling the odd weightlessness, too. The chirrup brought Rick back to his senses. He wasn't in some marvelous bed, he was in space! But natural forces still bound him to earth, and mother earth would reclaim him with crushing, final impact within a very few minutes. He tasted blood. The Earthman had done this! His death would be on the Earthman's head. He knew the drone control couldn't function, but he didn't know why. He was only sure of one thing. The Earthman was a member of the electronics department. Only someone who knew the drone system intimately could have bypassed the control by wiring it so the board showed green even when the control wasn't working. Rising anger stirred him. With one trembling hand he reached out and managed to hook the channel on which the marmoset's chair was hung. He pulled himself erect. He had forgotten he was weightless. He kept right on going until his head banged painfully on the bottom of the nose-cone radar unit. The shock of pain, unlike the throbbing from the acceleration, cleared his head and made him angrier. Carefully now, he hauled himself down again. He patted the spacemonk as he went by, an absent-minded, comradely gesture. He was intent on the drone control in the center of the floor. The Earthman hadn't had much time. Whatever he had done to sabotage the control must have been done in a very few minutes. Rick got into position, kneeling on the deck, steadying himself with one hand. With the other he searched for his flashlight and found it hanging from his belt. His head sagged, and had it not been for the weightlessness he would have fallen forward onto the drone control. He was in worse shape than he realized. Then, some inner warning signal sounded, and he came back to consciousness with a start.