Journey Into Space by Charles Chilton

Author:Charles Chilton
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Science Fiction
Published: 2011-04-25T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 9 - LOST IN SPACE

I awoke as from a nightmare. I had been in a torture chamber, strapped to the floor, and the ceiling had gradually descended to crush me out of existence. My body ached in every limb. I had a violent headache and a dreadful feeling of nausea. Then I came to, to find Jet bending over me. “How do you feel, Doc?” he was saying.

“Dreadful,” I told him. “What happened?”

“I don’t know.”

“How do you feel?”

“Same as you. Awful. But the pressure’s gone now.”

“Did you black out?” I asked him. “Yes--we all did.”

“How about Mitch and Lemmy?”

“They’re still unconscious, flat out. Do you think you can get up?”

I tried. It was difficult and rather painful, but I made it. Lemmy was lying near the control table, a nasty bump showing on his forehead and a trickle of blood down the side of his face. Mitch was not far from his bunk which he had tried to reach before the increasing pressure overtook him and pinned him to the floor.

Lemmy moaned. We went over to him. After a few moments he opened his eyes. “You all right, Lemmy?” asked Jet.

He looked up at us in a daze. “Oh,” he groaned, “leave me alone. I feel shocking.”

Mitch stirred. A cursory examination showed he was in a bad way, far worse than when we had first taken off from Earth and he had suffered so badly from space sickness. He didn’t reply to any of my questions; all he could manage was a faint noise at the back of his throat.

“Jet, give me a hand, will you?” I called.

Jet left Lemmy at once and between us we lifted the Australian on to his bunk. When we had finished it suddenly occurred to me that I should not have needed Jet’s help, for under gravity-less conditions Mitch should have weighed nothing.

“We must still be accelerating,” Jet said. “Not very much but enough to give us something like the strength of gravity we know on Earth. Come on, Doc. Let’s see if we can find out what’s happened to us. We’ll take a look outside first. See if those ships are still there.”

Jet switched on the televiewer. The screen glowed, and hundreds of bright white lines ran down the frame from top to bottom. I thought at first that it wasn’t quite in focus, but no matter how much Jet fiddled with the controls the lines remained. “It’s crazy--the tube must have gone,” he said.

“No, Jet, I don’t think it’s that.”

“Then what is it? Why don’t we get a clear picture?”

“It is a clear picture,” I told him.

“Huh?”

“Those bright streaks are points of light travelling from the top of the frame to the bottom. They’re stars.” “Stars?”

“Yes, Jet. Don’t you see? The ship is spinning, turning head over heels, and those lines are the stars flashing by as we turn. That’s why we can still feel a gravitational pull. It’s not gravity at all, really--it’s centrifugal force.”

Jet gasped. “You’re right, Doc. But

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