st
twist possible had been given to the distorted time fields, watched a
far, far galaxy ahead that seemed unchanging.

Hours, days sped by, and he did not move from his position in the ship.
But the ship had crossed the great gulf, and was speeding through the
galaxy now. He was near the end. At a reckless speed, he sat motionless
before the controls, save for slight movements of supple fingers that
directed the ship at a mad pace about some gigantic sun and its family
of planets. Suns flashed, grew to discs, and were left behind in the
briefest instant.

The ship slowed, the terrific pace it had been holding fell, and dull
whine of overworked generators fell to a contented hum. A star was
looming, expanding before it. The great sun glowed the characteristic
red of a giant as the ship slowed to less than a light-speed, and turned
toward a gigantic planet that circled the red sun. The planet was very
close to 50,000 miles in diameter, and it revolved at a distance of four
and one half billions of miles from the surface of its sun, which made
the distance to the center of the titanic primary four billion, eight
hundred million miles, in round figures, for the sun's diameter was
close to six hundred and fifty million miles! Greater even than Antares,
whose diameter is close to four hundred million miles, was this star of
another universe, and even from the billions of miles of distance that
its planet revolved, the disc was enormous, a titanic disc of dull red
flame. But so low was its surface temperature, that even that enormous
disc did not overheat the giant planet.

The planet's atmosphere stretched out tens of thousands of miles into
space, and under the enormous gravitational acceleration of the
tremendous mass of that planet, it was near the surface a blanket dense
as water. There was no temperature change upon it, though its night was
one hundred hours long, and its day the same. The centrifugal force of
the rapid rotation of this enormous body had flattened it when still
liquid till it seemed now more of the shape of a pumpkin than of an
orange. It was really a double planet, for its satellite was a world of
one hundred thousand miles diameter, yet smaller in comparison to its
giant primary than is Luna in comparison to Earth. It revolved at a
distance of five million miles from its primary's center, and it, too,
was swarming with its people.

But the racing ship sped directly toward the great planet, and shr