to rest close to where Chet lay, then
placed the limp form on the self-adjusting floor of the control room.
There must be no shifting of the body as the pull of gravitation
ceased. Soft blankets made a resting place for him.

The entrance port was closed and sealed; and the ship rose gently
under his touch. And, below them, the mirrors showed a world that sank
away. Diane's head was pressed near to his to watch that vanishing
world.

Each rugged mountain was softened in the Earthlight's mellow glow;
they melted together, and lost all sharpness of form. And the light
faded and vanished as they rose into the blanket of gas that blocked
off the return rays and made of this world a dark moon.

No regret now for the territory that was unexplored. Harkness told
himself he would return. And, with the vanishing of that world his
thoughts were only of the little flame of life that still flickered in
Chet's body, and of the Earth, and of the metal ball that was swinging
them out and away.... The sound of the stern exhaust built up and up
to the roaring thunder that meant the blast was opened full....

CHAPTER XI

"_Nothing to Be Done_"

Unmoving, their ship seemed, through the long hours. Yet there were
lights that passed swiftly and unnoticed, and the unending thunder
from the stern gave assurance that they were not floating idly in the
vast sea of space.

The sun was behind them, and ahead was Earth in midday glory; Harkness
could not tear his eyes away from that goal. He stood always at the
controls, not because there was work to be done, but for the feeling
it gave him of urging the ship onward.

Diane ministered to Chet and dressed the wound. There were few words
exchanged between them.

The menace that had emptied Earth's higher levels of all aircraft was
still there. No ships were in sight, as Harkness guided his ship
toward the great sphere. His speed had been cut down, yet still he
outraced the occasional, luminous, writhing forms that threw
themselves upon them. Then the repelling area--and he crashed silently
through and down, with their forward exhaust roaring madly to hold
them in check.

A sea and a shoreline, where a peninsula projected like a giant
boot--and he knew it for Italy and the waters of the Mediterranean.

"Vienna," Diane was telling him; "go to Vienna! It is nearby. And I
know of a surgeon--one of the greatest!"

And an hour later, a quiet, confident man was telling them: "But
yes!--