60
t it already? Well, I wonder if one of you could tell me just what it was we hit? I've been so busy I haven't had a chance to think."
"Don't take the chance now, then," grinned Morey. "You might strain your brain."
"Please!" Fuller pleaded, wincing. "Not before breakfast. Just explain what that storm was."
"We simply came to a region in space where cosmic rays are created," explained Arcot.
Fuller frowned. "But there's nothing out here to generate cosmic rays!"
Arcot nodded. "True. I think I know their real source, but I believe I'll merely say they are created here. I want to do more work on this. My idea for an energy source greater than any other in the universe has been confirmed.
"At any rate, they are created in that space, a perfect vacuum, and the space there is distorted terrifically by the titanic forces at work. It is bent and twisted far out of the normal, even curvature, and it was that bumpy spot in space that threw us about so.
"When we first entered, using the space-strain drive, the space around the ship, distorted as it was, conflicted with the region of the cosmic ray generation and the ship lost out. The curvature of space that the ship caused was sometimes reinforced and sometimes cancelled out by the twisted space around it, and the tremendous surges of current back and forth from the main power coil to the storage coils caused the electric discharges that kept burning through the air. I notice we all got a few burns from that. The field was caused by the terrific surges of current, and that magnetic field caused the walls of the ship to heat up due to the generation of electric current in the walls."
Fuller looked around at the walls of the ship. "Well, the Ancient Mariner sure took a beating."
"As a matter of fact, I was worried about that," said Arcot. "Strong as that hull is, it might easily have been strained in that field of terrific force. If it happened to hit two 'space waves' at once, it might have giv