moving at a completely impossible speed. The energy of their position
4,000 miles high had been transformed into kinetic energy of motion. And
at 40 miles there is something very close to a vacuum, compared to
sea-level. But compared to true emptiness, and at the speed of meteors,
the thin air had a violent effect.

A thin humming sound began. It grew louder. The substance of the ship
was responding to the impact of the thin air upon it. The sound rose to
a roar, to a bellow, to a thunderous tumult. The ship quivered and
trembled. It shook. A violent vibration set up and grew more and more
savage. The whole ship shook with a dreadful persistence, each vibration
more monstrous, more straining, more ominous than before.

The four in the space ship cabin knew torture. Weight returned to them,
weight more violent than the six gravities they had known for a bare
fourteen seconds at take-off. But that, at least, had been smoothly
applied. This was deceleration at a higher figure yet, and accompanied
by the shaking of bodies which weighed seven times as much as ever
before--and bodies, too, which for weeks past had been subject to no
weight at all.

They endured. Nothing at all could be done. At so many miles per second
no possible human action could be determined upon and attempted in time
to have any effect upon the course of the ship. Joe could see out a
quartzite port. The ground 40 miles below was merely a blur. There was
a black sky overhead, which did not seem to stir. But cloud-masses
rushed at express-train speed below him, and his body weighed more than
half a ton, and the ship made the sound of innumerable thunders and
shook, and shook and shook....