Spillthrough — Reading Companion

There was a lurch and Brad was jerked to one side, his head ramming against the inclination control. The ventral jet came to life in unexpected protest and fired once.

His hand shot out instinctively to return the loose, displaced lever to neutral. But the force of the single burst had already taken effect and the lower part of his stomach tied itself in a knot.

Centrifugal force reeled him to the fringe of consciousness. He struggled to reach the dorsal-ventral firing lever, praying that the linkage was not severed and the mechanism was still operative. His hand found the lever and jerked. The dorsal jet came to life with a roar. He jockeyed the control back and forth across neutral position. The two jets fired alternately. The sickening, end-over-end gyration became gentler.

The ship steadied itself again into immobility. But a snap sounded from back aft. It was followed by a grating noise that crescendoed and culminated in a terrific crash. His ears popped. A _clang_ reverberated, evidence of an automatic airlock sealing off another punctured section of the vessel.

Shrugging fatigue from his body, he looked up at the panel. The massometer showed a decrease of six tons. The explanation was simple, Brad laughed dryly: A good one-quarter of his load of crated inter-calc audio retention banks had rammed through the hull and floated into space.

He glanced at the scope. The twenty odd crates, some of them taking up an orbital relationship with the vessel, were blips on the screen.

Twisting the massometer section selector, he read off the figures. Hold One showed full cargo of inter-calc equipment. Hold Two, with its thirty bins of hematite, was intact. The third cargo compartment, containing more crated inter-calc units, was the damaged one. The massometer reading for that hold accounted for the missing weight.

"How're you doing, Brad?" the receiver rasped feebly. He recoiled at the unexpected sound.

"She's still in one piece, Jim," he shouted to compensate for the strength the signal would lose in traveling the distance to the fleeing lifecraft. "Have you cleared through your second hyperjump yet?"

"Getting ready to go into the third. There won't be any more communicating after that ... not with this short-range gear and your faulty transmitter. Find out the trouble yet?"

Brad ignored the question. "How long, Jim?" His voice was eager. "How long before you get to port?"

"Three jumps in one day. Seven more to go. That figures out to a little over two more days. I'm making better time than we expected with this peanut. Allow two more days for the slow tows to return.... Still think it'll hold together?"

"Brad," Jim's voice went into low gear. "I've still got enough juice to come back and pick you up. After all, one ship and one load of cargo ... it's just not worth it."

Brad listened to the ominous convulsions of the ship for a moment. "Your orders are to continue to Vega IV. I'm sticking."

"But, skipper! Dammit! There's always the chance of spilling through into normal! That's a torturous way to go!"

Brad's lips brushed roughly against the bulkhead mike. "If I fall through it's just me, isn't it?"

Although the sound level was too low, he knew there was a sigh on the other end. "Okay," the speaker whispered. "If I can't convince you...."

Brad leaned against the bulkhead and shivered. He'd have to see whether he couldn't get more output from the heat converter--if he could chance going past the leaking pile again. Or _was_ it the cold that was causing him to tremble?--If he entered normal space at less than minimum breakthrough speed.... He didn't complete the distasteful mental picture.

He thought of his only functioning hyperdrive tube. Its gauge showed a power level that was only high enough to boost the craft back onto the hyperspace level when it started to conform with the normal tendency to fall through. How many times the tube could be counted on to repeat the performance he couldn't guess. It might be painful if he should let the drop gain too much momentum before correcting--human beings were built to cross the barrier in nothing longer than a micro-second. But, he resolved, he would worry about that when the time came.

"Why don't you let it go, Brad?" the voice leaped through the grating again.

Brad started. He thought Jim had cut the communication.

"You know the score. If we swing this we can get all of West Cluster Supplies' work. We'll need an extra ship--several of them. But with the contract we'll be able to borrow as much as we want."

Jim laughed. "At least I'm glad there's a rational, mercenary motive. For a while I thought you were going through with that go-down-with-the-ship routine."