After long concentration, he got them fully open. The instrument chassis was directly before him, extended over his diaphragm on its elbow joint. Still without moving anything but his eyesand those only with the utmost patiencehe checked each of the meters. Velocity: 22.4 c. Operating temperature: normal. Ship temperature: 37 C. Air pressure: 778 mm. Fuel: No. I tank full. No. 2 tank full. No. 3 tank 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. Immediately 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.