ce, it was more than two
hundred and fifty thousand light years across. Checking carefully, Morey
read their distance as just shy of five hundred thousand light years.

"Hold on--here we go," called Arcot. Space was suddenly black, and
beside them ran the twin ghost ships that follow always when space is
closed to the smallest compass, for light leaving, goes around a space
whose radius is measured in miles, instead of light centuries and
returns. There was no sound, no slightest vibration, only Torlos' iron
bones felt a slight shock as the inconceivable currents flowed into the
gigantic space distortion coil from the storage fields, their shielded
magnetic flux leaking by in some slight degree.

For ten seconds that seemed minutes Arcot held the ship on the course
under the maximum combined powers of space distortion and time field
distortion. Then he released both simultaneously.

The velvet black of space was about them as before, but now the disc of
the Nebula was tiny behind them! So tiny was it, that these men, who
knew its magnitude, gasped in sudden wonder. None of them had been able
to conceive of such a velocity as this ship had shown! In seconds, Morey
announced a moment later, they had traveled _one million, one hundred
thousand light years_! Their velocity was six hundred and sixty
quadrillion miles per second!

"Then it will take us only a little over one thousand seconds to travel
the hundred and fifty million light years, at 110,000 light years per
second--that's about the radius of our galaxy, isn't it!" exclaimed
Wade.

They started on now, and one thousand and ten seconds, or a little more
than eighteen minutes later, they stopped again. So far behind them now
as to be almost lost in the far scattered universes, lay their own
Island, and carefully they photographed the Universe that now lay less
than twenty million light years ahead. Still, it was further, even after
crossing this enormous gulf, than are many of those nebulae we see from
Earth, many of which lie within that distance. They must proceed
cautiously now, for they did not know the exact distance to the Nebula.
Carefully, running forward in jumps of five million light years,
forty-five second drives, they worked nearer.

Then finally they entered the Island, and drove toward the denser
center.

"Good Lord, Arcot, look at those suns!" exclaimed Morey in amazement.
For the first time they were seeing the suns of this system at a range