ll into each other. "Well, I
don't want to be around."

"You haven't any choice," Arcot grinned. Then his face grew serious.
"What I want to do is simple. We have the molecular ray. Those stars are
hot. They don't fall into each other because they are rotating about
each other. Suppose that rotation were stopped--stopped suddenly and
completely? The molecular ray acts catalytically; we won't supply the
power to stop that star, the star itself will. All we have to do is
cause the molecules to move in a direction opposite to the rotation.
We'll supply the impulse, and the star will supply the energy!

"Our job will be to break away when the stars get close enough; we are
really going to hitch our wagon to a star!

"The mechanics of the job are simple. We will have to calculate when and
how long to use the power, and when and how quickly to escape. We'll
have to use the main power board to generate the ray and project it
instead of the little ray units. With luck, we ought to be free of this
star in three days!"

Work was started at once. They had a chance of life in sight, and they
had every intention of taking advantage of it! The calculating machines
they had brought would certainly prove worth their mass in this one use.
The observations were extremely difficult because the ship was rocketing
around the star in such a rapid orbit. The calculations of the mass and
distance and orbital motion of the other star were therefore very
difficult, but the final results looked good.

The other star and this one formed a binary, the two being of only
slightly different mass and rotating about each other at a distance of
roughly two million miles.

The next problem was to calculate the time of fall from that point,
assuming that it would stop instantaneously, which would be
approximately true.

The actual fall would take only seven hours under the tremendous
acceleration of the two masses! Since the stars would fall toward each
other, the ship would be drawn toward the falling mass, and since their
orbit around the star took only a fraction of a second to complete, they
had to make sure they were in the right position at the halfway point
just before collision occurred. Also, their orbit would be greatly
perturbed as the star approached, and it was necessary to calculate that
in, too.

Arcot calculated that in twenty-two hours, forty-six minutes, they would
be in the most favorable position to start the fall. They could