The Living World by E. C. Tubb

Author:E. C. Tubb [Tubb, E. C.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780575107359
Publisher: Orion
Published: 2013-12-30T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 7

Into the Coalsack

Time slowed, seemed to stretch and drag so that each second became a minute and each minute an hour, and still the thin, high shrilling of the ultrasonic mounted, grew louder, jarred in ever-increasing resonance, and with the increased sound came—hell!

The metal of the hull and internal structure picked up the vibration, amplified it, transmitted it, sent it whining through the air, through the padding of the control chairs, through the levers of the controls themselves. Resonance built up in bone and cell, in corpuscle and nerve, and with it came the mind-twisting agony of ruptured cells and burst capillaries.

Rex slumped in his control-chair feeling the shrilling vibration find sympathetic echoes deep within his body. Red-eyed he stared at the singing glass of the instruments, studying power output, time, frequency, and the hundred dials and gauges which controlled this tiny man-made world boring through the twisting grey of hyperspace.

Beside him Carson lolled in unconsciousness, his pain dulled by nerve blocks and his senses stupefied with narcotics. Carl groaned from the engine room, sweating and writhing beneath the lash of the ultrasonics, his big, yet delicate hands, flickering over the vernier controls of rheostats controlling the power flow to the tri-axial coils.

He was attempting the impossible!

Deliberately he altered the power flow from coil to coil, checking one flow, increasing another, struggling to damp out the ultrasonic vibration by heterodyning one frequency against another. It was delicate work, too delicate! Mind and eye, ear and hand, all had to be in perfect unison and a single slip could cause a flood of lethal vibration, which would sterilise the ship of all living things.

In the control room Rex listened with aching ears to the unequal struggle, and abruptly stabbed at the buttons of the intercom.

“Carl. How much longer can you hold out?”

“I don’t know. The adjustment’s all shot, the coils are trembling on the edge of three decimal places. I’m damping out the ultrasonics, but we could either die or emerge at any time.”

“I see.”

“How much longer, Rex?”

“Not long. We are almost at the place designated by the co-ordinates.” He forced himself to chuckle. “You were wrong, Carl. You said that the engine couldn’t last more than thirty hours, and we’ve done almost seventy.”

“Thanks to the engineer.”

Rex heard the big man groan as pain lashed at his seared flesh and automatically his hand darted to a short lever on the control panel.

“Carl! Carl, can you hear me?”

“Yes, Rex. Sorry.”

“Stand by for emergence,” snapped Rex. “I’m breaking out of this.”

“No!”

“Don’t be a fool man, how much longer can you tune those coils by hand?”

“Long enough.” The big man gulped, and Rex could imagine the man’s private hell.

“I failed once before, Rex. I’m not going to fail again.”

“That was years ago, on a passenger ship, and you weren’t to blame. No man can tune coils while in flight for long. No man is a machine, and you are injured, unable to co-ordinate mind and muscle for long periods. Give it up, Carl. There is no shame in not being able to do the impossible.

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