not
magnetically shielded.

Space was utterly black about them now; there wasn't the slightest hint
of light. The ten seconds that Arcot had allowed dragged slowly. Then at
last came the heavy crashing of the huge relays; the current flowed back
into the storage coils, and space became normal again. They were alone
in the blackness.

Morey dove swiftly for the observatory. Before them, there was little to
see; the dim glow of nebulae millions of light years away was scarcely
visible to the naked eye, despite the clarity of space.

Behind them, like a shining horizon, they saw the mass of the Galaxy for
the first time as free observers.

Morey began to make swift calculations of the distance they had come by
measuring the apparent change in diameter of the Galaxy.

Arcot floated into the room after him and watched as Morey made his
observations and began to work swiftly with pencil and paper. "What do
you make?" Arcot asked.

"Mmmmm. Let's see." Morey worked a moment with his slide rule. "We made
good time! Twenty-nine light years in ten seconds! You had it on at half
power--the velocity goes up as the cube of the power--doubling the
power, then, gives us eight times the velocity--Hmmmmmm." He readjusted
the slide rule and slid the hairline over a bit. "We can make ten
million light years in a little less than five days at full power.

"But I suggest we make another stop in six hours. That will put us about
five radii, or half a million light years from the Galaxy. We'll need to
take some more photographs to help us retrace our steps to Earth."

"All right, Morey," Arcot agreed. "It's up to you. Get your photos here
and we'll go on. By the way, I think you ought to watch the instruments
in the power room; this will be our first test at full power. We figured
we'd make twenty light years per second, and it looks as if it's going
to be closer to twenty-four."

A few minutes later, Arcot seated himself at the control board and
flipped on the intercom to the power room. "All ready, Morey? I just
happened to think--it might be a good idea to pick out our galaxy now
and start toward it."

"Let's wait," cautioned Morey. "We can't make a very careful choice at
this distance, anyway; we're beyond the enlarging power range of the
telectroscope here. In another half million light years, we'll have a
much better view, and that comparatively short distance won't take us
much out of our way."

"Wait a minute," said Fulle