ch," he
remarked, conversationally. "What next?"

"You will seize hold of the energies your friends offer. You will bind
them to yours and shape the whole into a dimensionless sphere of pure
controlled, dirigible energy. And, as well as being the binding force,
the cohesiveness, you must also be the captain and the pilot and the
astrogator and the ultimately complex computer itself."

"But how can I.... Okay, damn it. I _will_!"

"Of course you will, sir. Remember also that once the joinings are made
I can be of very little more assistance, for my peyondix is as nothing
compared to that of your fusion of eight. Now, to assemble the energies
and join them you will, all together, deny the existence of the sum
total of reality as you know it. Distance does not exist--every point in
the reachable universe coincides with every other point and that common
point is the focus of your attention. You can be and actually are
anywhere you please or everywhere at once. Time does not exist. Space
does not exist. There is no such thing as opacity; everything is
perfectly transparent, yet every molecule of substance is perceptible in
its relationship to every other molecule in the cosmos. Senses do not
exist. Sight, hearing, taste, touch, smell, sathura, endovix--all are
parts of the one great sense of peyondix. I am guiding each of you
seven--closer! Tighter! There! Seize it, sir--and when you work the
Stretts you must fix it clearly that time does not exist. You must work
in millionths of microseconds instead of in minutes, for they have minds
of tremendous power. Reality does not exist! Compress it more, sir.
Tighter! Smaller! Rounder! There! Hold it! Reality does not
exist--distance does not exist--all possible points are....
_Wonderful!_"

Tuly screamed the word and the thought: "Good-by! Good luck!"

END OF PART ONE

PART TWO

They were the Masters, and they
had only to choose: eternal life,
as inhuman monsters--or death!

MASTERS
OF
SPACE

BY EDWARD E. SMITH &
E. EVERETT EVANS

Illustrated by BERRY

_What has gone before: The crew of the starship Orion found
themselves in the middle of a great space war between the
creatures called Stretts and the lost android servants of
their own human ancestors. Helped by the androids, the
Earthmen formed themselves into the powerful telepathic
linkage called "peyondix" to invade the Strett planet
it