olling
helplessly on top of him, while the space ship bounced up twenty
thousand feet as though propelled by a giant sling.

* * * * *

The peep, peep of the radio signalling stopped. The space ship rolled
helplessly for a moment, then resumed an even keel. Brand and Dex
gazed at each other.

"What the hell?" said Dex.

He started to get to his feet, put all his strength into the task of
moving his Jupiter-weighted body, and crashed against the top of the
control room.

"Say!" he sputtered, rubbing his head. "Say, what _is_ this?"

Brand, profiting by his mistake, rose more cautiously, shut off the
atomic motor, and approached a glass panel again. "God knows what it
is," he said with a shrug. "Somehow, with our passing into the red
area, the pull of gravity has been reduced by about ten, that's all."

"Oh, so that's all, is it? Well, what's happened to old Jupe's
gravity?"

Again Brand shrugged. "I haven't any idea. Your guess is as good as
mine."

He peered down through the panel, and stiffened in surprise.

"Dex!" he cried. "We're moving! And the motor is shut off!"

"We're drawing down closer to the ground, too," announced Dex,
pointing to their altimeter. "Our altitude has been reduced five
thousand feet in the last two minutes."

Quickly Brand turned on the motor in reverse. The space ship, as the
rushing, reddish ground beneath indicated, continued to glide forward
as though pulled by an invisible rope. He turned on full power. The
ship's progress was checked a little. A very little! And the metallic
red surface under them grew nearer as they steadily lost altitude.

"Something seems to have got us by the nose," said Dex. "We're on our
way to the center of the red spot, I guess--to find whatever it was
that Journeyman found. And the radio communication his been broken
somehow...."

Wordlessly, they stared out the panel, while the shell, quivering with
the strain of the atomic motor's fight against whatever unseen force
it was that relentlessly drew them forward, bore them swiftly toward
the heart of the vast crimson area.

* * * * *

"Look!" cried Brand.

For over an hour the ship had been propelled swiftly, irresistibly
toward the center of the red spot. It had been up about forty thousand
feet. Now, with a jerk that sent both men reeling, it had been drawn
down to within fifteen thousand feet of the surface; and the sight
that