Cantrell's Comet

Far out in space, Jupiter a tiny moon and its satellites mere pin-points of light, Stevens

turned to his companion with a grin.

     "Well, Nadia, my ex-groundgripper, here's where we turn spacehounds again.

Hope you like it better this time, because I'm afraid that we'll have to stay weightless 'for

quite a while." He slowly throttled down the mighty flow of power, and watched the

conflicting emotions play over Nadia's face in her purely personal battle against the

sickening sensations caused by the decrease in their acceleration.

     "I'm sorry, sweetheart." His grin disappeared. "Wish I could take it for you, but. .

."

     "But there are times when we've got to fight, our own battles and bury our own

dead," she interrupted, gamely. "Cut off the rest of that power! I'm not going to be sick—

I won't be a—what do you spacehounds call us poor earth-bound dubs who can't stand

weightlessness—weight-fiends, isn't it?"

     "Yes; but you aren't . . ."

     "I know I'm not, and I'm not going to be one, either! I'm all x, Steve—it's not so

bad now, really. I held myself together that time, anyway, and I feel lots better now.

Have you found Cantrell's Comet yet ? And why so sure all of a sudden that they can't

find us ? That power beam still connects us to Ganymede, doesn't it ? Maybe they can

trace it."

     "At-a-girl, ace!" he cheered. "I'll tell the world you're no weight-fiend—you're a

spacehound right. Most first-trippers, at this stage of the game, wouldn't be caring a

whoop whether school kept or not, and here you're taking an interest in all kinds of

things already. You'll do, girl of my heart—no fooling!"

     "Maybe,1 and maybe you're trying to kid somebody," she returned, eying him

intently. "Or maybe you just don't want to answer those questions I asked you a minute

ago."

     "No, that's straight data, right on zero clear across the panel," he assured her.

"And as for your questions, they're easy. No, I haven't looked for the comet yet,

because we'll have to drift for a couple of days before we'll be anywhere near where I

think it is. No, they can't trace us, because there is now nothing to trace, unless they

can detect the slight power we are using in our lights and so on—which possibility is

vanishingly small. Potentially, our beam still exists, but since we are drawing no power,

it has no actual present existence. See?"

     "Uh-uh," she dissented. "I can't say that I .can quite understand how a beam can

exist potentially and yet not be there actually enough to trace. Why, a thing has to be

actual or not exist at all—you can't possibly have something that is nothing. It doesn't

make sense. But lay off of those integrations of yours, please," as Stevens began to

draw a diagram. "You know that your brand of math is over my head like a circus tent,

so we'll let it lay. I'll take your word for it, Steve—if you're satisfied, it's all x with me."

     "I think I can straighten you out a little, by analogy. Here's a rough sketch of a

cylinder, with its shade and shadow. You've had descriptive geometry, of course, and so

know that a shadow, being simply a projection of a material object upon a plane, is a

two-dimensional thing—or rather, a two-dimensional concept. Now take the shade,

which is, of course, this entire figure here, between the cylinder casting the shadow and

the plane of projection. You simply imagine that there is a point source of light at your

point of projection: it isn't really there. The shade, then, of which I am drawing a picture,

has only a potential existence. You know exactly where it is, you can draw it, you can

define it, compute it, and work with it — but still it doesn't exist; there is absolutely

nothing to differentiate it from any other volume of air, and it cannot be detected by any

physical or mechanical means. If, however, you place a light at the point of projection,

the shade becomes actual and can be detected optically. By a sufficient stretch of the

imagination you might compare our beam to that shade. When we turn our power on the

beam is actual; it is a stream of tangible force, and as such can be detected electrically.

When our switches here are open, however, it exists only potentially. There is no motion

in the ether, nothing whatever to indicate that a beam ever had actually existed there.

With me?"

     "Floundering pretty badly, but I see it after a fashion. You physicists are peculiar

freaks—where we ordinary mortals see actual, solid, heavy objects, you see only empty

space with a few electrons and things floating around in it; and yet where we see only

empty space, you can see things 'potentially' that may never exist at all. You'll be the

death of me yet, Steve! But I'm wasting a lot of time. What do we do now ?"

     "We get busy on the big tube. You might warm up the annealing oven and melt

me that pot of glass, while I get busy on the filament supports, plate brackets, and so

on." Both fell to work with a will, and hours passed rapidly and almost silently, so intent

was each upon his own tasks.

     "All x, Steve," Nadia broke the long silence. "The pyrometer's on the red, and the

oven's hot," and the man left his bench. Taking up a long paddle and an even longer

blow-pipe, he skimmed the melt to a dazzlingly bright surface and deftly formed a

bubble.

     "I just love to talk at you when you've got your mouth full of a blowpipe." Nadia

eyed him impishly and tucked her feet beneath her, poised weightless as she was. "I've

got you foul now—I can say anything I want to, and you can't talk back, because your

bubble will lose its shape if you do. Oh, isn't that a beauty! I never saw you blow

anything that big before," and she fell silent, watching intently.

     Slowly there was being drawn from the pot a huge, tapering bulb of hot,

glistening glass, its cross-section at the molten surface varying as Stevens changed the

rate of draw or the volume of air blown through the pipe. Soon that section narrowed

sharply. The glass-blower waved his hand and Nadia severed the form neatly with a

glowing wire, just above the fluid surface of the glass remaining in the pot. Pendant from

the blowpipe the bulb was placed over the hot-bench, where Stevens, now begoggled,

begloved, and armed with a welding torch, proceeded to embellish it with sundry necks,

side-tubes, supports and other attachments of peculiar pattern. Finally the partially-

assembled tube was placed in the annealing oven, where it would remain at a high and

constant temperature until its filaments, grids, and plates had been installed. Eventually,

in that same oven, it would be allowed to cool slowly and uniformly over a period of

days.

     Thus were performed many other tasks which are ordinarily done either by

automatic machinery or by highly-skilled specialists in labor—for these two, thrown upon

their own resources, had long since learned how much specialization may be

represented by the most commonplace article. Whenever they needed a thing they did

not have—which happened every day—they had either to make it or else, failing in that,

to go back and build something that would enable them to manufacture the required

item. Such setbacks had become so numerous as to be expected as part of the day's

work; they no longer caused exasperation or annoyance. For two days the jacks-of-all-

trades worked at many lines and with many materials before Stevens called a halt.

     "All x, Nadia, it's time for us to lay off of the tinkering and turn into astronomers.

We've been out for fifty I-P hours, and we'd better begin looking around for our heap of

scrap metal," and, the girl at the communicator plate and Stevens at their one small

telescope, they began to search the black, star-jeweled heavens for Cantrell's Comet.

     "According to my figures, it ought to be about four hours right ascension, and

something like plus twenty degrees declination. My figures aren't accurate, though,

since I'm working purely from memory, so we'd better cover everything from Aldebaran

to the Pleides."

     "But the directions will change as we go along, won't they?"

     "Not unless we pass it, because we're heading pretty nearly straight at it, I think."

     "I don't see anything interesting thereabouts except stars. Will it have much tail ?"

     "Very little—it's close to aphelion, you know, and a comet doesn't have much of a

tail so far away from the sun. Hope it's got some of its tail left, though, or we may miss it

entirely."

     Hours passed, during which the two observers peered intently into their

instruments, then Stevens straightened up and stretched.

     "Looks bad, ace—we should have spotted it before this. Time to eat, too. You'd

better . . ."

     "Oh, look here, quick!" Nadia interrupted. "Here's something! Yes, it is a comet,

and quite close—it's got a little bit of a dim tail."

     Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and, blonde head pressed close to

brown, the two wayfarers studied the, faint image of the wanderer of the void.

     "That's it, I just know it is!" Nadia declared. "Steve, as a computer, you're a

blinding flash and a deafening report !"

     "Yeah—missed it only about half a million kilometers or so," he replied, grinning,

"and I'd fire a whole flock of I-P check stations for being four thousand off. However, I

could have done worse—I could easily have forgotten all the data on it, instead of only

half of it." He applied a normal negative acceleration, and Nadia heaved a profound sigh

of relief as her weight returned to her and her body again became manageable by the

ordinary automatic and involuntary muscles.

     "Guess I am a kind of a weight-fiend at that, Steve— this is much better!" she

exclaimed.

     "Nobody denies that weight is more convenient at times; but you're a

spacehound just the same—you'll like it after a while," he prophesied.

     Stevens took careful observations upon the celestial body, altered his course

sharply, then, after a measured time interval again made careful readings.

     "That's it, all x," he announced, after completing his calculations, and reduced

their negative acceleration by a third. "There—we'll be just about traveling with it when

we get there," he said. "Now, little K. P. of my bosom, our supper's been on plus time for

hours. What say we shake it up?"

     "I check you to nineteen decimals," and the two were soon attacking the savory

Ganymedean goulash which Nadia had put in the cooker many hours before.

     "Should we both go to sleep, Steve, or should one of us watch it?"

     "Sleep, by all means. There's no meteoric stuff out here, and we won't arrive

before ten o'clock tomorrow, I-P time," and, tired out by the events of the long day, man

and maid sought their beds and plunged into dreamless slumber.

     While they slept the Forlorn Hope drove on through the void at a terrific but

constantly decreasing velocity and far off to one side, plunging along a line making a

sharp angle with their own course, there loomed larger and larger the masses which

made up the nucleus of Cantrell's Comet.

     Upon awakening, Stevens' first thought was for the comet, and he observed it

carefully before he aroused Nadia, who hurried into the control room. Looming large in

the shortened range of the plate their objective hurtled onward in its eternal course, its

enormous velocity betrayed only by the rapidity with which it sped past the incredibly

brilliant background of infinitely distant stars. Apparently it was a wild jumble of separate

fragments; a conglomerate, heterogenous aggregation of rough and jagged masses

varying in size from grains of sand up to enormous chunks which upon Earth would

have weighed millions of tons. Pervading the whole nucleus a slow, indefinite movement

was perceptible —a vague writhing and creeping of individual components working and

slipping past and around each other as they all rushed forward in obedience to the

immutable cosmic law of gravitation.

     "Oh, isn't that wonderful!" Nadia breathed. "Think of actually going to visit a

comet! It sort of scares me, Steve—it's so creepy and crawly looking. We're awfully

close, aren't we ?"

     "Not so very. We'd probably have lots of time to eat breakfast. But just to be on

the safe side, maybe I'd better camp here at the board, and you bring me over

something to eat."

     "All x, Chief!" and Stevens ate, one eye upon the screen, watching closely the

ever-increasing bulk of the comet.

     For many minutes he swung the Forlorn Hope in a wide curve, approaching the

masses of metal ever and ever more nearly, then turned to the girl.

     "Hold everything, Nadia—power's going off in a minute!" He shut off the beam;

then, noting that they were traveling a trifle faster than the comet, he applied a small

voltage to one dirigible projector. Darting the beam here and there, he so corrected their

flight that they were precisely stationary in relation to the comet. He then opened his

switches, and the Forlorn Hope hurtled on. Apparently motionless, it was now a part of

Cantrell's Comet, traveling in a stupendous, elongated ellipse about the Master of our

Solar System, the sun.

     "There, ace, who said anything about weight-fiends ? I was watching you, and

you never turned a hair that time."

     "Why, that's right—I never even thought about it—I was so busy studying that

thing out there! Suppose I've got used to it already?"

     "Sure—you're one of us now. I knew you would be. Well, let's go places and do

things! You'd better put on a suit, too, so you can stand in the air-lock and handle the

line."

     They donned the heavily-insulated, heated suits, and Stevens snapped into their

sockets the locking plugs of the drag line.

     "Hear me?" he asked. "Sound-disks all x?"

     "All x."

     "On the radio—all x?"

     "All x."

     "I tested your tanks and heaters—they're all x. But you'll have to test . . ."

     "I know the ritual by heart, Steve. It's been in every show in the country for the

last year, but I didn't know you had to go through it every time you went out-of-doors!

Valves, number one all x, two all x, three all x . . ."

     "Quit it!" he snapped. "You aren't testing those valves! That check-up is no joke,

guy. These suits are complicated affairs, and some parts are apt to get out of order. You

see, a thing to give you fresh air at normal pressure and to keep you warm in absolute

space can't be either simple or foolproof. They've worked on them for years, but they're

pretty crude yet. They're tricky, and if one goes sour on you out in space it's just too

bad—you're lucky to get back alive. A lot of men are out there somewhere yet because

of sloppy check-ups."

     " 'Scuse it, please—I'll be good," and the careful checking and testing of every

vital part of the space-suits went on.

     Satisfied at last that the armor was spaceworthy, Stevens picked up the coils of

drag-line, built of a non-metallic fiber which could retain its flexibility and strength in the

bitter cold of outer space, and led the girl into the air-lock.

     "Heavens, Steve! It's perfectly stupendous, and grinding around worse than the

wreckage of the Arcturus was when I wouldn't let you climb up it—why, I thought comets

were little, and hardly massive at all!" exclaimed the girl.

     "This is little, compared to any regular planet or satellite, or even the asteroids.

There's only a few cubic kilometers of material there, and, as I said before, it's a

decidedly unusual comet. You know the game ?"

     "I've got it—and believe me, I'll yank you back here a lot faster than you can jump

over there if any one of those lumps starts to fall on you! Is this drag line long enough ?"

     "Yes, I've got a hundred meters here, and it's only fifty meters over there to

where I'm going. So-long," and with a light thrust of his feet he .dove head-foremost

across the intervening space, a heavy pike held out ahead of him. Straight as a bullet

he floated toward his objective, a jagged chunk many yards in diameter, taking the

shock of his landing by sliding along the pike-handle as its head struck the mass.

     Then, bracing his feet against one lump, he pushed against its neighbor, and

under that steady pressure the enormous masses moved apart and kept on moving,

grinding among their fellows. Over and around them Stevens sprang, always watching

his line of retreat as well as that of his advance, until his exploring pike struck a lump of

apparently solid metal. Hooking the fragment toward him, he thrust savagely with his

weapon and was reassured—that object was not only metal, but it was metal so hard

that his pike-head of space-tempered alloy had not made an impression upon its

surface. Turning on his helmet light, he swung his heavy hammer repeatedly, but could

not break off even a small fragment.

     "Found something, Steve?" Nadia's voice came clearly in his ears.

     "I'll say I have! A hunk of solid, non-magnetic metal about the size of an office

desk. I can't break off any of it, so guess we'll have to grab the whole chunk."

     He hitched the end of his cable around the nugget, made sure that the loops

would not slip, and then, as Nadia tightened the line, he shoved mightily.

     "All x, Nadia, she's coming! Pull in my drag line as I sail over there, and I'll help

you land her."

     Inside the Forlorn Hope the mass of metal was urged into the shop, where

Stevens clamped it immovably to the steel floor before he took off his space-suit.

     "Why, it's getting covered with snow, and the whole room is getting positively

cold!" Nadia exclaimed.

     "Sure. Anything that comes in from space is cold, even if it's been out only a few

minutes, and that hunk of stuff has been out for nobody knows how many million years.

It didn't get much heat from the sun except at perihelion, you know, so it's probably

somewhere around minus two hundred and sixty degrees now. I'll have to throw a

heater on it for half an hour before we can touch it. And since this is more or less new

stuff to you, I'll caution you—don't try to touch anything that has just come in. That

hammer or pike would freeze your hand instantly, even though they've been out only a

little while. Before you touch anything, blow on it, like this, see ? If your breath freezes

solid on it, like that, don't touch it—it's cold."

     Under the infra-beams of the heater the mass of metal was brought to room

temperature and Stevens attacked it with his machine tools. Bit by bit the stubborn

material was torn from the lump. Through heavy goggles he watched the incandescent

mass in a refractory crucible, in the heart of the induction furnace.

     "What do you think you've got—what you want?"

     "I don't know. It wasn't iron—it wouldn't hold a magnet. It's royal metal of some

kind. Base metals mostly melt at around fifteen hundred, and that crucible is still dry as

a bone at better than seventeen."

     "How are you going to separate out the tantalum and the others you want from

the ones that you don't want ?"

     "I'm afraid that I'm not going to, very well," replied Stevens, with a wry grimace.

"What I don't know about metallurgy would fill a library, and I'm probably the world's

worst chemist. However, by a series of successive liquations I hope to separate out

fractions that I can use. Platinum melts somewhere around seventeen fifty, tantalum

about twenty-eight hundred, and tungsten not until 'way up around thirty-three or four

hundred—and that, by the way, means lots of grief. Of course each fraction will

probably be an alloy of one kind or another, but I think maybe I'll be able to make them

do."

     "But mayn't that whole chunk be a pure metal ?"

     "It's conceivable, but not probable. There, she's beginning to separate at just

below eighteen hundred! Platinum group coming out now, I think—platinum, rhodium,

iridium, and that gang, you know. While I'm doing this you might be getting those five

coils into exact resonance, if you want to."

     "Sure I want to," and Nadia made her way across to the short-wave oscillator and

set to work.

     After an hour or so, bent over her delicate task, she began to twitch uneasily,

then shrugged her shoulders impatiently.

     "What's the idea of staring at me so?" she broke out suddenly. "How do you

expect me to tune these things up if you . . ." She stopped abruptly, mouth open in

amazement as she turned toward Stevens. He had not been even looking at her, but

had turned a surprised face from his own task at the sound of her voice. "Excuse it,

please, Steve. I don't know what's the matter with me—getting jumpy, I guess."

     "I wish that was it, but I'm guessing it isn't." Face suddenly grim and hard,

Stevens leaped to the communicator plate and shot the beam out into space.

     "You're a fine-tuned instrument yourself, ace, and I'll bet you've detected

something . . . I thought so! There's the answer—the guy that was looking at you!"

     Plainly there was revealed upon the plate a small, spherical space-ship, very like

the one that had attacked and destroyed the Arcturus. After Nadia had taken one glance

at it Stevens shut off the power and leaped out into the shop. He closed all the bulkhead

doors and airbreak openings, then closed and secured the massive insulating door of

the lifeboat in which they had made their headquarters. Then, after they had again put

on the space-suits they had taken off such a short time before, he extinguished all the

lights and hooded the communicator screen before he ventured again to glance out into

the void.

     "If I had a brain in my head, instead of the pint of bean soup I've got up there,

we'd have worn these when they cut up the Arcturus, and saved us a lot of mental wear

and tear," he remarked. "They were right there in the lockers all the time, and I knew it."

     "Well, we got away, anyway. You can't be blamed for that—you couldn't be

expected to think of everything at once. I think you did wonderfully well as it was—we

didn't have much time, you know."

     "No, but I should have thought of anything as obvious as that, anyway. Wonder

how they found us? Whether they detected us, or came out to this comet after metal,

same as we did, and found us accidentally? However, it works out to the same

endpoint—they're apparently out to get us. I'm afraid this is going to be a whole lot like a

rabbit righting back at a man with a gun; but we'll sure try to nibble us off a lunch while

they're getting a square meal . . . here they come!"

     The enemy sphere launched its flaming plane of force, and the Forlorn Hope

shuddered in every plate and member as its apex was severed cleanly under the

impact. Instantly Stevens hurled his only weapons. Flaming ultraviolet and dully glowing

infra-red, the twin beams lashed out; but their utmost force was of slight moment to the

enormous power driving the enemy screens. Two circular spots of cherry red in space

were the only results of Stevens' attack, and the next fierce cut sheared away the two

projectors and, incidentally, a full half of the fifty-inch armor of the leading edge.

     "Then we're checking out now?" Nadia asked quietly, as the man's hands

dropped from his useless controls. "I'm sorrier than I can say, lover. Oh, sweetheart,

how I want to live with you! But at least, I'm glad that I can go out with you," and her

glorious eyes were shining with unshed tears as she pressed as close to his side as the

cumbersome suits would permit.

     "Don't throw in the towel yet. Perhaps they want to capture us alive, like they did

before; and if so, we may be able to hide out on them somewhere and pull off another

escape. Things don't look any too bright, perhaps, but I don't quit until my number is

actually called."

     He hooked a hand under her belt as the shocks came closer, and stood tense

and ready. The lancing plane cut through one end of their control room, and Stevens

leaped with his companion toward the new-made opening; while the air shrieked

outward into space and their suits bulged suddenly with the abrupt increase in pressure

differential. While they were in midflight the frightful blade of destruction cleaved its way

through the control board and through the spot upon which they had been standing a

moment before. As they passed the severed edge, en route into open space. Stevens

seized a projecting brace and clung there, every nerve taut.

     "Something funny here, Nadia," he said after a minute of strained waiting. "They

should have made one more cut, to make us absolutely blind and helpless. As it is

they've clipped off all our projectors, so we can't move, but I think we've got the whole

control compartment of number two lifeboat untouched. If so, we can look around,

anyway. Let's go!"

     Floating effortlessly from fragment to fragment, they made their way toward the

as yet undamaged section of their cruiser. They found an airlock in working order, and

were soon in the second lifeboat, where Stevens hastily turned on a communicator and

peered out into space.

     "There they are! There's another stranger out there, too. They're fighting with her,

now—that's probably why they didn't polish us off." Steel-braced, clumsy helmets

touching, the two Terrestrials stared spell-bound into the plate; watching while the

insensately vicious intelligences within the sphere brought its every force to bear upon

another and larger sphere which was now so close as to be plainly visible. Like a

gigantic drop of quicksilver this second globe appeared—its smooth and highly-polished

surface one enormous spherical mirror. Watching tensely, they saw flash out that

frightful plane of seething energy, with the effects of which they were all too familiar, and

saw it strike full upon the dazzling ball.

     "This is awful, ace!" Stevens groaned. "They haven't got ray-screens, either, and

without them they don't stand a chance. No possible substance can stand up under that

beam. When they get done and turn back to us, we'll have to dive back there where we

were."

     But that brilliant mirror was not as vulnerable as Stevens had supposed. The

plane of force struck and clung, but could not penetrate it. Broken up into myriads of

scintillating crystals of light, intersecting, multi-colored rays, and cascading flares of

sparkling energy, the beam was reflected, thrown back, hurled away on all sides into

space in coruscating, blinding torrents. And neither was the monster globe inoffensive.

The straining watchers saw a port open suddenly, emit a flame-erupting something, and

close as rapidly as it had opened. That something was a projectile, its propelling rockets

fiercely aflame; as smoothly brilliant as its mother-ship and seemingly as impervious to

the lethal beams of the common foe. Detected almost instantly as it was, it received the

full power of the savage attack. The hitherto irresistible plane of force beat upon it; ultra-

violet, infra-red, and heat rays enveloped it; there were hurled against it all the forces

known to the monstrously scientific minds dwelling within that fiendishly destructive

sphere. Finally, only a scant few hundreds of yards from its goal, the protective mirror

was punctured and the freight of high explosive let go, with a silent, but nevertheless

terrific, detonation. But now another torpedo was on its way, and another, and another;

boring on ruthlessly toward the smaller sphere. Fighting simultaneously three torpedoes

and the giant globe, the enemy began dodging, darting hither and thither with a

stupendous acceleration; but the tiny pursuers could not be shaken off. At every dodge

and turn steering rockets burst into furious activity and the projectiles rushed ever

nearer. Knowing that she had at last encountered a superior force, the sphere turned in

mad flight; but, prodigious as was her acceleration, the torpedoes were faster and all

three of them struck her at once. There ensued an explosion veritably space-wracking

in its intensity; a flash of incandescent brilliance that seemed to fill all space, subsiding

into a vast volume of tenuous gas which, feebly glowing, flowed about and attached

itself to Cantrell's Comet. And in the space where had been the enemy sphere there

was nothing.

     A slow-creeping pale blue rod of tangible force reached out from the great

sphere, touched the wreckage of the Forlorn Hope, and pulled; gently but with

enormous power.

     "Tractor beams again!" exclaimed Stevens, still at the plate. "Everybody's got 'em

but us, it seems."

     "And we can't fight a bit any more, can we ?"

     "Not a chance—bows and arrows wouldn't do us much good. However, we may

not need 'em. Since they fought that other crew, and haven't blown us up, they aren't

active enemies of ours, and may be friendly. I haven't any idea who or what they are,

since even our communicator ray can't get through that mirror, but it looks as though

our best bet is to act peaceable and see if we can't talk to them in some way. Right?"

     "Right." They stepped out into the airlock, from which they saw that the great

sphere had halted only a few yards from them, and that an indistinct figure stood in an

open door, waving to them an unmistakable invitation to enter the strange vessel.

     "Shall we, Steve?"

     "Might as well. They've got us foul, and can take us if they want us. Anyway, we'll

need at least a week to fix us up any kind of driving power, so we can't run — and we

probably couldn't get away from those folks if we had all our power. They haven't blown

us up, and they could have done it easily enough. Besides, they act friendly, so we'd

better meet them half way. Dive!"

     Floating toward the open doorway, they were met by another rod of force,

brought gently into the airlock, and supported upright beside the being who had invited

them to visit him. Apparently an empty space-suit stood there; a peculiarly-fitted suit of

some partially transparent, flexible, glass-like material; towering fully a foot over the

head of the tall Terrestrial. Closer inspection, however, revealed that there was

something inside that suit — a shadowy, weirdly-transparent being, staring at them with

large, black eyes. The door clanged shut behind them, they heard the faint hiss of

inrushing air, and the inner door opened; but their enveloping suits remained stretched

almost as tightly as ever. They felt the floor lurch beneath their feet, and a little weight

was granted them as the space-ship got under way. Stevens waved his arms vigorously

at the stranger, pointing backward toward where he supposed their own craft to be. The

latter waved an arm reassuringly, pressed a contact, and a section of the wall suddenly

became transparent. Through it Stevens saw with satisfaction that the Forlorn Hope

was not being abandoned; in the grip of powerful, tractor beams, every fragment of the

wreckage was following close behind them in their flight through space.

     Stevens and Nadia followed their guide along a corridor, through several doors,

and into a large room, which at first glance seemed empty, but in which several of the

peculiarly transparent people of the craft were lying about upon cushions. They were

undoubtedly human—but what humans! Tall and reedy they were, with enormous barrel

chests, topped by heads which, though really large, appeared insignificant because of

the prodigious chests and because of the huge, sail-like, flapping ears. Their skins were

a peculiarly, lividly pale blue, absolutely devoid of hair; and their lidless eyes, without a

sign of iris, were chillingly horrible in their stark contrast of enormous, glaring black pupil

and ghastly transparent blue eyeball. As the two Terrestrials entered the room, the

beings struggled to their feet and hurried laboriously away. Soon one of them returned,

dressed in an insulating suit, and carrying three sets of head harnesses, connected by

multiplex cables to a large box which he placed upon the floor. He handed the headsets

to the first officer, who in turn placed two of them at the feet of the Terrestrials,

indicating to them that they were to follow his example in placing them upon their heads,

outside the helmets. They did so, and even through the almost perfect insulation and in

spite of the powerful heaters of their suits they felt a touch of frightful cold. The stranger

turned a dial, and the two wanderers from Earth were instantly in full mental

communication with Barkovis, the commander of a space-ship of Titan, the sixth

satellite of Saturn!

     "Well, I'll be . . . say, what is this, anyway?" Steve exclaimed involuntarily, and

Nadia smiled as Barkovis answered with a thought clearer than any spoken words could

have been.

     "It is a thought-exchanger. I do not know its fundamental mechanism, since we

did not invent it and since I have had little time to study it. The apparatus, practically as

you see it here, was discovered but a short time ago, in a small, rocket-propelled space-

ship which we found some distance outside of the orbit of Jupiter. Its source of power

had been destroyed by the cold of outer space, but re-powering it was, of course, a

small matter. The crew of the vessel were all dead. They were, however, of human

stock, and of a type adapted for life upon a satellite. I deduce, from your compact

structure, your enormous atmospheric pressure, and your to us unbelievably high body

temperature, that you must be planet-dwellers. I suppose that you are natives of Jupiter

?"

     "Not quite." Stevens had in a measure recovered from his stunned surprise. "We

are from Tellus, the third planet," and he revealed rapidly the events leading up to their

present situation, concluding: "The people in the other sphere were, we believe, natives

of Jupiter or of one of the satellites. We know nothing of them, since we could not look

through their screens. You rescued us from them; do you not know them?"

     "No. Our visirays also were stopped by their screens of force—screens entirely

foreign to our science. This is the first time that any vessel from our Saturnian system

has ever succeeded in reaching the neighborhood of Jupiter. We came in peace, but

they attacked us at sight and we were obliged to destroy them. Now we must hurry back

to Titan, for two reasons. First, because we are already at the extreme limit of our power

range, and Jupiter is getting further and further away from Saturn. Second, because our

mirrors, which we had thought perfect reflectors of all frequencies possible of

generation, are not perfect. Enough of those forces came through the mirrors to

volatilize half our crew, and in a few minutes more none of us would have been left

alive. Why, in some places our very atmosphere became almost hot enough to melt

water! If another of those vessels should attack us, in all probability we should all be

lost. Therefore we are leaving, as rapidly as is possible."

     "You are taking the pieces of our ship along—we do not want to encumber you."

     "It is no encumbrance, since we have ample supplies of power. In fact, we are

now employing the highest acceleration we Titanians can endure for any length of time."

     Stevens pondered long, forgetting that his thoughts were plain as print to the

Titanian commander. Thank Heaven these strangers had sense enough to be friendly—

all intelligent races should be friends, for mutual advancement. But it was a mighty long

stretch to Saturn and this acceleration wasn't so much—how long would it take to get

there? Could they get back? Wouldn't they save time by casting themselves adrift,

making the repairs most urgently needed, and going back to Ganymede under their own

power —but would they have enough power left in the wreck to get even that far? And

how about the big tube? He was interrupted by an insistent thought from Barkovis.

     "You will save time, Stevens, by coming with us to Titan. There we shall aid you

in repairing your vessel and in completing your transmitting tube, in which we shall be

deeply interested. Our power plants shall supply you with energy for your return journey

until you are dose enough to Jupiter to recover your own beam. You are tired. I would

suggest that you rest—that you sleep long and peacefully."

     "You seem to be handling the Forlorn Hop? without any trouble—the pieces

aren't grinding at all. We'd better live there, hadn't we?"

     "Yes, that would be best, for all of us. You could not live a minute here without

your suits; and, efficiently insulated as those suits are, yet your incandescent body

temperature makes our rooms unbearably hot—so hot that any of us must wear a

space-suit while in the same room with you, to avoid being burned to death."

     The "incandescently hot" Terrestrials were wafted into the open airlock of their

lifeboat upon a wand of force, and soon had prepared a long overdue supper, over

which Stevens cast his infectious, boyish grin at Nadia.

     "Sweetheart, you are undoubtedly a 'warm number', and you have often

remarked that I 'burn you up'. Nevertheless I think that we were both considerably

surprised to discover that we are both hot enough actually to consume persons

unfortunate enough to be confined in the same room with us!"

     "You're funny, Steve—like a crutch," she rebuked him, but smiled back sunnily,

an elusive dimple playing in one lovely brown cheek. "Looking right through anybody is

too ghastly for words, but I think they're perfectly all x, anyway, in spite of their being so

hideous and so cold-blooded, so there!"