began to close in on them. The thin
sunlight darkened; and with its lowering, the red spot of Jupiter
glared more luridly ahead of them. Silently the two men gazed at it,
and wondered what it held.

They shot the space ship toward it, and halted a few hundred miles
away. Watery white light from the satellites, "that jitter around in
the sky like a bunch of damned waterbugs," as Dex put it, was now the
sole illumination.

They hung motionless in their space shell, to wait through the
five-hour Jovian night for the succeeding five hours of daylight to
illumine a slow cruise over the red area that, in less than a year,
had swallowed up three of Earth's space ships. And ever as they
waited, dozing a little, speculating as to the nature of the danger
they faced, the peep, peep of the radio shrilled in their ears to tell
them that there was still a connection--though a very tenuous
one--with their mother planet.

* * * * *

"Red spot ten miles away," said Brand in the transmitter. "We're
approaching it slowly."

The tiny sun had leaped up over Jupiter's horizon; and with its
appearance they had sent the ship planing toward their mysterious
destination. Beneath them the fog banks were thinning, and ahead of
them were no clouds. For some reason there was a clarity unusual to
Jupiter's atmosphere in the air above the red section.

"Red spot one mile ahead, altitude forty thousand feet," reported
Brand.

He and Dex peered intently through the port glass panel. Ahead and far
below, their eyes caught an odd metallic sheen. It was as though the
ground there were carpeted with polished steel that reflected red
firelight.

Tense, filled with an excitement that set their pulses pounding
wildly, they angled slowly down, nearer to the edge of the vast
crimson area, closer to the ground. The radio keened its monotonous
signal.

Brand crawled to the transmitter, laboriously, for his body tipped the
scales here at nearly four hundred pounds.

"We can see the metallic glitter that Journeyman spoke of," he said.
"No sign of life of any kind, though. The red glow seems to flicker a
little."

Closer the ship floated. Closer. To right and left of them for vast
distances stretched the red area. Ahead of them for hundreds of miles
they knew it extended.

"We're right on it now," called Brand. "Right on it--we're going over
the edge--we're--"

Next instant he was sprawling on the floor, with Dex r