Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 199: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

There was a moment of stunned silence. “Roger, Rubberneck, use your own discretion.” “Rubberneck, Roger out.” He slapped the switch viciously over to intercom. “O.K., Mac, you'll have to con me in. | can’t see well enough to judge distances. I’m not going to fire, going to blow off fuel and let the pump pressure drive us in. Line us up on her now.” The engineer clutched the flywheels in and the ship swung until its nose bore on the sphere. There were manual controls for emergency. Goodrich cut out the autopilot and punched the fuel switch, leaving the ignition off. The ship began to drift toward the sphere. “O.K.,” McKay said. “Cut her now till | turn over.” He swung the ship again until the stem view screen centered on the sphere. His own eyes were giving him trouble now, but they were much closer, he could see the target well enough to center it. “O.K.,” he said. “Now blow again.” Bertha had rotated twice while they were maneuvering, and the hatch was almost directly beneath them. McKay could make out Brawn’s figure scrambling back inside to get in the clear. The sphere swelled slowly until it filled the whole view screen. “Cut her!” McKay said. There was a grinding jar as the rocket and the sphere collided. Goodrich and McKay unbuckled and started to climb out the hatch. They looked up toward the sphere and saw Brown, blue in the face and with blood running from his nose, slithering down over the Skin of the rocket. He motioned them violently back and scrambled inside, fumbling to plug into the intercom. McKay helped him. “Let’s get some pressure on this can!” he said through chattering teeth. “Don’t worry about the ship, I’ve got her tied down.” CORniclooo SS CO