General Message to Marsbound Ships:
Area of electrostatic disturbance located in Fourth Quadrant, Sunline A-6, of unprecedented intensity. Believed to be caused by concentrated electron streams from Sun spots. Our main electric line was short-circuited and we are in total darkness except for emergency battery light. No danger. Tests by reflection of radio waves indicate that the band of disturbance may occupy the entire Fourth Quadrant. Suggest that Marsbound ships swing up into Third Quadrant to escape this electron band. That is all.

Captain Robert Rernshaw,
per Sylvester O’Brien,
Chief Radio Operator,

S.L. Antares.

...I’ll give you some inside low-down on that electron band we’re passing through. Our lights are still out— I’m reading your message by flashlight — but the electrician thinks he’ll have the trouble fixed in an hour or so. Naturally, we aren’t getting any directional beam signals, as we’ve drifted away off course, in a flat, unpowered arc. We’re getting the meteor warnings on auxiliary battery power, like the radio — but they are useless since we’re not on the course they apply to! All in all, the Antares is just blundering along, somewhere in the Fourth Quadrant.

(Electrostatic disturbance from 'SOS in Space' (1937) by Eando Binder)

It is very weird in a way, this passing through an electron band, which I understand is like a huge geyser of speeding electrons gushing out into space from a group of Sun spots on old Sol. I passed through a small one a year ago, but nothing like this, where our whole ship is glowing with an eerie purple light. From the side port window the curve of the hull has millions of little violet lights dancing helterskelter over it, and every now and then there is a shower of white-hot sparks, as if we had touched the end of a live wire.

Our engines began to splutter a little later, too — interference in the sparking chambers — and at present we are going along unpowered. We have the same velocity, of course, that we had when we hit the electron band — good old Newton! — but we are losing time and will be a number of hours late at our Chicago dock.