Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 69: what you’re looking at

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

“Of course,” Owens agreed. “If there’s been no power on the Viking for over a century, and thus no artificial gravity, the sudden change would wipe them out—crush them like flies in a vice. And | dare say that Captain Kleberg wouldn’t care to throw this ship into free fall from here to Capella with a load of unconditioned and generally hysterical passengers. We've got a culture too, you know.” Captain Kleberg gave his best approaching-the-guillotine smile. “Don’t even think about it,” he advised. “We'll all wind up in the funny room. But remember—we’ve got to make it fast, whatever we do. And no mistakes, of course. This may be a life or death matter for those people, and our own orbital error isn’t going to be any joke, even for the computers. Ill hold this ship in position as long as necessary, but well have to get with it. If there are people on that ship ‘That’s enough ‘ifs’ for one session, | think,” smiled Mark Langston, stoking up his pipe again. The small but rugged space launch, utterly dwarfed by the vast distances all around her, came down with a wrenching whine—out of hyperspace and into normal Subspace where the dead Wking waited. The shock of the transition stunned even the trained crew, and offered convincing evidence of why the great’ star ship, the WilsonLangford, could not be so maneuvered into normal space without a minimum of five days of physical and psychological conditioning for her passengers. Mark Langston nursed the launch toward the dark Shadow of the Wking, which was now visible to the naked eye. It floated ahead of them, cold and alone, like a vast creature of the ocean deeps that had grown old and tired and now only floated mindlessly with the currents it once had challenged. Despite the faint throbbing in his bad leg, Mark Langston felt better than he had in a long, long time. He was home, lost in the stars, and the weary years fell away from him one by one and left him young again. CORniclooo SS CO