had gone off with the power. What, he
wondered, had come to pass? He often found himself thinking in such
terms these days.

Hoarse cries issued from the passageway outside; then he heard a squeak
as his cabin door opened and persons unknown floated inside, breathing
heavily.

"The power has failed, sir!" gasped the first officer's voice.

"That has not escaped my notice," Iversen said icily. Were not even his
last moments to be free from persecution?

"It's all that maniac Smullyan's fault. He stored his _mk'oog_ in the
fuel tanks. After emptying them out first, that is. We're out of fuel."

The captain put a finger in his book to mark his place, which was, he
knew with a kind of supernal detachment, rather foolish, because there
was no prospect of there ever being lights to read by again.

"Put him in irons, if you can find him," he ordered. "And tell the men
to prepare themselves gracefully for a lingering death."

Iversen could hear a faint creak as the first officer drew himself to
attention in the darkness. "The men of the _Herringbone_, sir," he said,
stiffly, "are always prepared for calamity."

"Ay, that we are," agreed various voices.

So they were all there, were they? Well, it was too much to expect that
they would leave him in death any more than they had in life.

"It is well," Iversen said. "It is well," he repeated, unable to think
of anything more fitting.

Suddenly the lights went on again and the ship gave a leap. From his
sprawling position on the floor, amid his recumbent officers, Iversen
could hear the hum of motors galvanized into life.

"But if the fuel tanks are empty," he asked of no one in particular,
"where did the power come from?"

"I am the power," said a vast, deep voice that filled the ship from hold
to hold.

"And the glory," said the radio operator reverently. "Don't forget the
glory."

"No," the voice replied and it was the voice of Bridey, resonant with
all the amplitude of the immense chest cavity he had acquired. "Not the
glory, merely the power. I have reached a higher plane of existence. I
am a spaceship."

"Praise be to the Ultimate Nothingness!" Harkaway cried.

"Ultimate Nothingness, nothing!" Bridey said impatiently. "I achieved it
all myself."

"Then that's how the Flimbotzi spaceships were powered!" Iversen
exclaimed. "By themselves--the Flimbotzik themselves, I mean--"

"Even so," Bridey replied grandly. "And this lofty form of life happens
to be