Destroyer of Worlds by E. C. Tubb Page B

risk.’
    ‘Why? The Hyper-Drive is a proven and safe technology — it brought us to this region of interstellar space in the first place. And we’re relying in it to return to Earth when we’ve completed our mission. So —’
    Manton shook his head. ‘You know how the Hyper-Drive works — we create an energy field around our ship, a field of sub-space stress, so intense that it cannot exist in our universe — so something happens. The ship vanishes from our normal universe and enters a space where it can — hyperspace. When the field is released the ship emerges again into the normal continuum, but somehow it has moved from the place where it entered hyperspace —’
    ‘— where one hour in hyperspace is equal to a light year in travel,’ Maddox interrupted impatiently. ‘Direction of flight remains constant and the initial speed is irrelevant…so why can’t we use it to escape now?’
    ‘Have you forgotten what I said earlier?’ Manton shook his head again. ‘That this region appears to be a miniature universe with its own laws and own energy-levels that have no relation to those with which we are familiar? If we generated power like that here, where normal physics might not apply, it could well result in a colossal nuclear explosion!’
    ‘Saha?’
    ‘The Computer verifies, Commander. Our measured distance from the central body is remaining static. Sufficient time has lapsed for our velocity to have carried us away from it if we were continuing to move in a straight line relative to this area.’
    ‘But how?’ Maddox frowned as he snapped the question. ‘Our velocity was too high for us to be swung into orbit so soon.’
    ‘In our own universe you would be right,’ said Manton. ‘But, as I warned, the rules here are not the same as those outside. Direction, velocity, mass — all have different meanings. And there’s something more. Rose?’
    ‘All surface instrument readings are betraying an extremely odd condition. Commander. There is an increasing amount of energy potential radiating from the ship and apparently streaming into space.’
    ‘What?’ Maddox glared his incredulity. ‘Energy leaving the ship?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘That doesn’t make sense. We should be receiving it from the sun — the main body. It’s radiating light and there must be other energy-emissions. Yet you say — Frank?’
    ‘Monitors confirm, Commander. The ship is suffering a continual energy-loss.’
    ‘Scale?’
    ‘Treble normal and mounting.’
    ‘Cause?’
    ‘As yet unknown, but we have a clue.’ Weight killed the lights, leaving only the screens and monitors active. His face, reflecting the glow of tell-tales, too on the aspect of a clown’s mask; patches of coloured luminescence moving in a drifting pattern of variegated hue. ‘Look at the Omphalos, Commander.’
    ‘The Omphalos?’
    ‘The central body — we had to give it a name and this seemed appropriate.’
    ‘The Omphalos — the centre.’ Maddox looked at it, bright with greenish light, marked, pulsating.
    ‘I’m boosting the registers,’ said Weight. ‘Lifting the reception monitors into the ultra-violet and beyond and incorporating a compensatory translator. Now watch!’
    The image nickered as he threw switches, the greenish hue changing to a pale violet.
    ‘A beam!’ In the shadowed darkness Manton echoed his amazement. ‘We’re connected by a beam!’

CHAPTER 7
    It rose all around, an inverted cone of shimmering radiance which led from the Ad Astra to a point on the Omphalos. A funnel of sharply defined clarity which joined the two bodies together as a line would join a hooked fish to a rod.
    Maddox felt his muscles tighten at the analogy.
    ‘What is this? A freak of some kind? Rose?’
    She too was touched with coloured patches of shifting brightness; reds and blues, greens and yellows from the banked instruments before her touching uniform, hair, face and hands.
    ‘The registers show a directional flow of energy along the