“This must be the danger that message was trying to warn us against!” Bud exclaimed. “Could we be caught in the pull of another planet?”
“I doubt it,” Tom replied. “We haven’t traveled far enough from the earth to be influenced by another body.”
“Then what can it be?” Bud asked. “Some trick of Rotzog’s?”
“Perhaps.”
Tom watched the panel for any meter indications that might give him a clue.
He thought of the very great pull that “dead” stars can exert, but he knew that these bodies lay even farther out in space than the planets he had already considered.
His thinking was interrupted by the oscilloscope. Figures were appearing again.
“This may be the answer!” he said hopefully.
“Calling Swift!” the inventor translated.
It was a warning from the space beings that the MESSAGES FROM SPACE 187
Star Spear was passing close to a meteor field. It had a magnetic attraction which was pulling the ship off its course and drawing it toward the whirling mass of destructive meteorites!
“We must get out of the field!” Bud exclaimed. “Can’t we buck it?”
“Maybe we can,” Tom replied, “but it’ll use precious fuel.”
“We must take the chance,” Bud urged.
It seemed to Tom that their predicament resembled one of a helpless swimmer caught in a strong current. For the swimmer, the wisest course is not to buck the current, but to swim at a right angle to it until he has escaped its power.
The young inventor was jerked from his thoughts when another set of symbols appeared. “Race out of danger, at a right angle to your present course,”
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