plainly visible. Its axial rotation was apparent.

"Perfectly habitable," Blackstone said. "But I've searched all over this
hemisphere with the glass. No sign of human life--certainly nothing
civilized--nothing in the fashion of cities."

A fair little world, by the look of it. A tiny globe: Blackstone had
figured it at some eight hundred miles in diameter. There seemed a
normal atmosphere. We could see areas where the surface was obscured by
clouds. And oceans, and land masses. Polar icecaps. Lush vegetation at
its equator.

Blackstone had roughly cast its orbital elements. A narrow ellipse. No
wonder we had never encountered this fair little world before. It had
come from the outer region beyond Neptune. At perihelion it would reach
inside Mercury, round the Sun, and head outward again.

* * * * *

We swept past the asteroid at a distance of some six thousand miles.
Close enough, in very truth--a minute of flight at our combined speeds
totaling a hundred miles a second. I had descended to the passenger
deck, where I stood alone at a window, gazing.

The passengers were all gathered to view the passing little world. I
saw, not far from me, Anita, standing with her brother; and the giant
figure of Miko with them.

Half an hour since, first with the naked eye, this wandering little
world had shown itself; it swam slowly past, began to dwindle behind us.
A huge half moon. A thinner, smaller quadrant. A tiny crescent, like a
silver bar-pin to adorn some lady's breast. And then it was a dot, a
point of light indistinguishable among the myriad others hovering in
this great black void.

The incident of the passing of the asteroid was over. I turned from the
deck window. My heart leaped. The moment for which all day I had been
subconsciously longing was at hand. Anita was sitting in a deck chair,
momentarily alone. Her gaze was on me as I looked her way, and she
smiled an invitation for me to join her.

CHAPTER VII

_Unspoken Love_

Unspoken love! I think if I had yielded to the impulse of my heart, I
would have poured out all those protestations of a lover's ecstasy,
incongruous here upon this starlit public deck, to a girl I hardly knew.
I think, too, she might have received them with a tender acquiescence.
The starlight was mirrored in her dark eyes. Misty eyes, with great
reaches of unfathomable space in their depths. Yet I felt their
tenderness.

Unfathomable strangeness of