ll certainly be left intact. From any
one of those rooms we can reach a life-boat. Of course, it's a little
too much to expect that any one of the life-boats will be left whole,
but they're bulkheaded, too, you know, so that we can be sure of finding
something able to navigate--providing we can make our get-away. Believe
me, ace, I'm sure glad we're aboard the old _Arcturus_ right now, with
all her safety-devices, instead of on one of the modern liners. We'd be
sunk right."

"I felt sunk enough for a minute--I'm feeling better now, though, since
you are taking it so calmly."

"Sure--why not? A man's not dead until his heart stops beating, you
know--our turn'll come next, when they let up a little."

"But suppose they change the width of their slices, and hit this cubby,
small as it is?"

"It'd be just too bad," he shrugged. "In that case, we'd never know
what hit us, so it's no good worrying about it. But say, we might do
something at that, if they didn't hit us square. I can move fairly fast,
and might be able to get a door open before the loss of pressure seals
it. We'll light the flash ... here, you hold it, so that I can have both
hands free. Put both arms around me, just under the arms, and stick to
me like a porous plaster, because if I have to move at all, I'll have
to jump like chain lightning. Shine the beam right over there, so it'll
reflect and light up all the dials at once. There ... hold on tight!
Here they come!"

As he spoke, a jarring shudder shook one side of their hiding-place,
then, a moment later, the phenomenon was repeated, but with much less
force, upon the other side. Stevens sighed with relief, took the light,
and extinguished it.

"Missed us clean!" he exulted. "Now, if they don't find us, we're all
set."

"How can they possibly find us? I seem to be always worried about the
wrong things, but I should think that their finding us would be the
least of our troubles."

"Don't judge their vision system by ours--they've got everything,
apparently. However, their apparatus may not be delicate enough to spot
us in a space this small when their projectors flash through it, as they
probably will. Then, too, there's a couple of other big items in our
favor--nobody else is in the entire lower half, since all this machinery
down here is either automatic or else controlled from up above, so they
won't be expecting to see anybody when they get down this far; and we
aren't at all conspicuous. We'r