full. No. 4 tank nine tenths full. Gravity: I g. Calendar:
stopped.
He looked at it closely, though his eyes seemed to focus
very slowly, too. It was, of course, something more than a
calendarit was an all-purpose clock, designed to show him
the passage of seconds, as well as of the ten months his trip
was supposed to take to the double star. But there was no
doubt about it: the second hand was motionless.
That was the second abnormality. Garrard felt an impulse
to get up and see if he could start the clock again. Perhaps
the trouble had been temporary and safely in the past. Im-
mediately there sounded in his head the injunction he had
drilled into himself for a full month before the trip had
begun
Don’t move!
Don’t move until you know the situation as far as it can
be known without moving. Whatever it was that had snatched
Brown and Cellini irretrievably beyond human ken was
potent, and totally beyond anticipation. They had both been
excellent men, intelligent, resourceful, trained to the point
of diminishing returns and not a micron beyond that point
the best men in the Project. Preparations for every knowable
kind of trouble had been built into their ships, as they had
been built into the DFC-3. Therefore, if there was something
wrong nevertheless, it would be something that might strike
from some commonplace quarterand strike only once.
He listened to the humming. It was even and placid, and
not very loud, but it disturbed him deeply. The overdrive
was supposed to be inaudible, and the tapes from the first