Rock and soil were still falling when a radio report arrived. A mountain had collapsed fifty miles away. There was a new valley, and somebody had been killed. Three small earthquakes had shaken the neighborhood.
For twenty minutes, the reports piled up. The land was uneasy. Fourteen more earthquakes were recorded. Two of them were the most violent ever recorded in the affected areas. Great fissures had appeared. The ground jumped and trembled. The last temblor had occurred four hundred miles from the first; and they all lined up with the course of the Hope of Man.
Abruptly, there came an electrifying message. The round ship had emerged in the desert, and was beginning to climb upward on a long, swift shallow slant.
Less than three hours later, the salvage ship was again clinging to the side of the larger machine. Its huge magnets twisted stubbornly at the great lock-door. To the half-dozen government scientists who had come aboard, Hewitt said, 'It took an hour to turn it one foot. It shouldn't take more than thirty-five hours to turn it thirty-five feet. Then, of course, we have the inner door, but that's a different problem.' He broke off. 'Gentlemen, shall we discuss the fantastic thing that has happened?'
The discussion that followed arrived at no conclusion.
Hewitt said, 'That does it!' The outer door had been open for some while, and now, through the thick asbesglas, they watched the huge magnet make its final turn on the inner door. As they waited behind the transparent barrier, a thick metal arm was poked into the airlock, and shoved at the door. After straining with it for several seconds, its operator turned and glanced at Hewitt. The latter turned on his walkie-talkie.
'Come on back inside the ship. We'll put some air pressure in there. That'll open the door.'
He had to fight to keep his anger out of his voice. The outer door had opened without trouble, once all the turns had been made. There seemed no reason why the inner door should not respond in the same way. The Hope of Man was persisting in being recalcitrant.
The captain of the salvage vessel looked doubtful when Hewitt transmitted the order to him. 'If she's stuck,' he objected, 'you never can tell just how much pressure it'll take to open her. Don't forget we're holding the two ships together with magnets. It wouldn't take much to push them apart.'
Hewitt frowned over that. He said finally, 'Maybe it won't take a great deal. And if we do get pushed apart, well, we'll just have to add more magnets.' He added swiftly, 'Or maybe we can build a bulkhead into the lock itself, join the two ships with a steel framework.'
It was decided to try a gradual increase in air pressure. Presently, Hewitt watched the pressure gauge as it slowly crept up. It registered in pounds and atmospheres. At a fraction over ninety-one atmospheres, the pressure started rapidly down. It went down to eighty-six in a few seconds, then steadied, and began to creep up again. The captain barked an order to the engine room, and the gauge stopped rising. The man turned to Hewitt.
'Well, that's it. At ninety-one atmospheres, the rubber lining began to lose air, and didn't seal up again till the pressure went down.'
Hewitt shook his head in bewilderment. 'I don't understand it,' he said. 'That's over twelve hundred pounds to the square inch.'
Reluctantly, he radioed for the equipment that would be needed to brace the two ships together. While they waited, they tried several methods of using machinery to push open the door. None of the methods worked. It was evident that far higher pressures would be needed to force an entrance.
It required a pressure of nine hundred and seventy-four atmospheres.
The door swung open grudgingly. Hewitt watched the air gauge, and waited for the needle to race downward. The air should be rushing through the open door, on into the ship, dissipating its terrific pressure in the enormous cubic area of the bigger machine. It could sweep through like a tornado, destroying everything in its path.
The pressure went down to nine hundred and seventy-three. There it stopped. There it stayed. Beside Hewitt, a government scientist said in a strangled tone, 'But what's happened? It seems to be equalized at an impossible level. How can that be? That's over thirteen thousand pounds to the square inch.'
Hewitt drew away from the asbesglas barrier. 'I'll have to get a specially designed suit,' he said. 'Nothing we have would hold that pressure for an instant.'
It meant going down to Earth. Not that it would take a great deal of time. There were firms capable of building such a suit in a few days. But he would have to be present in person to supervise its construction. As he headed for a landing craft, Hewitt thought: 'All I've got to do is to get aboard, and start the ship back to Centaurus. I'll probably have to go along. But that's immaterial now.' It was too late to build more colonizing ships.
He was suddenly confident that the entire unusual affair would be resolved swiftly. He had no premonition.
It was morning at the steel city when he landed. The news of his coming had preceded him; and when he emerged from the space-suit factory shortly after noon, a group of reporters were waiting for him. Hewitt told them what he knew, but left them dissatisfied.
Back at his office, he made a mistake. He called Joan. It was years since they had talked and evidently she was no longer so tense, for she actually came to the phone. Her manner was light. 'And what's on your mind?' she asked.
'Reconciliation.'
'For Pete's sake!' she said, and laughed.
Her voice sounded more strident than when he had last seen her. It struck Hewitt with a pang that the vague reports he had heard, that she was associating not only with one man – which would be normal and to be expected – but with many, were true.
The realization stopped him a little but only a little. He said soberly, 'I don't know why that amuses you. What's happened to the profound and undying love which you used to swear would last for all eternity?'
There was a pause, then: 'You know,' she said, 'I really do believe you are simpleton enough, and that you are calling for a reconciliation. But I'm smart these days, and so I'll just put two and two together and guess that the return of your silly ship is probably connected with this call. Do you want me to get the family together and we all go back with you to Centaurus?'
Hewitt had the feeling that, after such an unfruitful beginning, it would be a mistake to continue the conversation. But he persisted anyway. 'Why not let me have the children?' he urged. 'The trip won't hurt them and at least they'll be out of the way when -'
Joan cut him off at that point. 'You see,' she laughed, 'I figured the whole crazy thing correctly.'
With that, she banged the receiver in his ear.
The evening papers phoned him about it, and then carried a garbled account of her version of his proposal to her. In print, the reference to himself as the 'baby Nova man' made him cringe. Hewitt hid from reporters who thereafter maintained a twenty-four-hour vigil in the lobby of the hotel where he lived.
Two days later, he needed a police escort to take him to the factory to pick up the specially built tank suit, and then on to the field, where he took off once more for the Molly D.
Once there, more than an hour was spent in testing. But at last a magnet drew shut the inner door of the Hope of Man. Then the air pressure in the connecting bulkhead was reduced to one atmosphere. Hewitt, arrayed in his new, motor-driven capsule on wheels, was then lifted out of the salvage ship into the bulkhead by a crane. The door locked tight behind him. Air was again pumped into the space. Hewitt watched the suit's air-pressure gauges carefully as the outside pressure was gradually increased to nine hundred and seventy-three atmospheres. When, after many minutes, the tank suit still showed no signs of buckling, he edged it forward in low gear and gently pushed open the door of the big ship.