The ship suddenly seemed
to writhe, space was black and starless about them, then sparkling
weirdly distorted stars, all before them. They were moving already.
Almost before the Ortolians fully realized what was happening, a dozen
stars had swung past the ship, driving on now at better than five light
years in every second. At this speed, approximately fourteen hours would
be needed to reach Ortol.

"Now, Arcot, perhaps you will explain to me the secret of this ship,"
said Zezdon Afthen at last, turning from the great lux pilot's window,
to Arcot seated in the pilot's chair. "I know that only the broadest
principles will be intelligible to me, for I could not understand that
ship we captured, after almost four months of study. Yet it crept
through space compared with this ship. Certainly no ship could
outdistance this in a race!"

"As a matter of fact--watch!" Arcot pushed a little metal button along a
slide to the extreme end. Again the ship seemed to writhe. Space was no
longer black, but faintly gray, and beside them, on either side, floated
two exact replicas of their ship! Zezdon Afthen stared. But in another
moment, both were gone, and space was black, yet in but a few moments a
grayness was showing, and light was appearing from all about, growing
gradually in intensity. For three seconds Arcot continued thus, then he
pulled the metal button down the slide, and flicked over another that he
had pulled to cause the second change. The stars were again before them,
their colors changed beyond all recognition at that speed. But the
orientation of the stars behind them had been familiar. Now an entirely
different set of constellation showed.

"I merely opened the ship out to her maximum speed for a moment. I was
able to see any large star 2000 light years in our path, and there were
none. Small stars do not bother us as I will explain. When I put on full
power of the main power coils, I drove the ship up to a speed of 30
light years a second. When I turned in the full power of the auxiliary
coils as well I doubled the power, and the speed was multiplied by
eight. The result was that in the four seconds of racing, we made
approximately 1000 light years!"

Zezdon Afthen gasped. "Two hundred and forty light years _per second_"!
He paused in bewilderment. "Suppose we had struck a small sun, a dark
star, even a meteor at that speed? What would have been the result?"

Arcot smiled. "The chances are excellent that we plo