forth in space, like a mighty,
cosmic pendulum. Breathlessly he watched. The ship was still in the grip
of the space field!

"Greg," he shouted, "we've got him!"

He raced back to the control panel, snapped a glance at the speed dial.
The needle was rising rapidly now, a full mile a second. Within another
fifteen minutes, it had climbed to a mile and a half. The _Invincible_
was starting to go places!

The engines still howled, straining, shrieking, roaring their defiance.

In an hour the needle indicated the speed of four miles a second. Two
hours later it was ten and rising visibly as Jupiter fell far behind and
the Sun became little more than a glowing cinder.

Russ swung the controls to provide side acceleration and the two ships
swung far to the rear of Neptune. They would pass that massive planet at
the safe distance of a full hundred million miles.

"He won't even make a pass at it," said Greg. "He knows he's licked."

"Probably trying to store some more power," suggested Russ.

"Sweet chance he has to do that," declared Greg. "Look at that needle
walk, will you? We'll hit the speed of light in a few more hours and
after that he may just as well shut off his lens. There just won't be
any radiation for him to catch."

Craven didn't make a try at Neptune. The planet was far away when they
intersected its orbit ... furthermore, a wall of darkness had closed in
about the ships. They were going three times as fast as light and the
speed was still accelerating!

Hour after hour, day after day, the _Invincible_ and its trailing
captive sped doggedly outward into space. Out into the absolute wastes
of interstellar space, where the stars were flecks of light, like tiny
eyes watching from very far away.

* * * * *

Russ lounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. There
was nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn't been anything to see or
do for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines still
hammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched an
empty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by any
intelligence, certainly not by man.

Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn't seem
mysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous.
Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled.

There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn't go faster than
light. Also, men had claimed that it wo