refusing to allow
the other ship to go with us. Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss
to the world. If we _should_ find iron, however, see to it that the
other vessel loses no time in following us."

"No fear of that! If you find iron all space will be full of vessels, as
soon as they can possibly be built--good-bye!"

The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the
air. Up and up, out beyond the last tenuous trace of atmosphere, on and
on through space it flew with ever-increasing velocity until Nevia's
gigantic blue sun had been left so far behind that it became a splendid
blue-white star. Then, projectors cut off to save the precious iron
whose disintegration furnished them power, for week after week Captain
Nerado and his venturesome crew of scientists drifted idly through the
illimitable void. Sun after sun, as visible in their ultra-instruments
as though the flying vessel were moving slower than light, they studied
without finding a single planet.

Three months passed. Nerado had already applied the slight power which
was to swing the vessel around in an immense circle, back toward his
native world. In that course he was rapidly approaching a sun, an
ordinary G-type dwarf, whose spectrum revealed a blaze of lines of the
precious element for which he was searching. Now at close observing
range--he had long since abandoned his former eager habit of studying a
sun as soon as it showed the tiniest perceptible disk in his most
powerful telescope--he turned on his powerful visiray beam without
enthusiasm, swung it upon that very commonplace sun, and shrieked aloud
in exultation. Not only one planet had that yellowish luminary--it had
six, seven, eight; yes, possibly nine or ten; and several of those
planets were themselves apparently centers of attraction around which
were circling other tiny worlds! Nerado thrilled with joy as he applied
a full retarding force, and every creature aboard that great vessel had
to peer into a plate or through a telescope, before he could believe
that planets other than Nevia did in reality exist!

Velocity checked to the merest crawl, as space-speed goes, and with
electro-magnetic detector screens full out, the Nevian vessel crept
toward our sun. Finally the detectors encountered an obstacle, a
conductive substance which the patterns showed conclusively to be
practically pure iron. Iron--an enormous mass of it--floating alone out
in space! Without waiting to