o the Dark
Moon, and,"--he paused to point toward a black portlight where
occasional lights flashed past--"I'll say we're going; going somewhere
at least. All I hope is that that Maxie boy doesn't find the Dark Moon
at about ten thousand per. He may be a great little skipper on a nice,
slow, five-hundred-maximum freighter, but not on this boat. I don't
like his landings."

* * * * *

Diane Delacouer raised her eyes to smile approvingly upon him. "You're
good, Chet," she said; "you are a darn good sport. They knock you down
out of control, and you nose right back up for a forty-thousand foot
zoom. And you try to carry us with you. Well, I guess it's time we got
over our gloom. Now what is going to happen?"

"I'll tell you," said Walter Harkness, looking at his watch: "if that
fool pilot of Schwartzmann's doesn't cut his stern thrust and build up
a bow resistance, we'll overshoot our mark and go tearing on a few
hundred thousand miles in space."

Diane was playing up to Chet's lead.

"_Bien!_" she exclaimed. "A few million, perhaps! Then we may see some
of those Martians we've been speculating about. I hear they are
handsome, my Walter--much better looking than you. Maybe this is all
for the best after all!"

"Say," Harkness protested, "if you two idiots don't know enough to
worry as you ought, I don't see any reason why I should do all the
heavy worrying for the whole crowd. I guess you've got the right idea
at that: take what comes when it gets here--or when we get there."

Small wonder, thought Chet, that Herr Schwartzmann stared at them in
puzzled bewilderment when he flung open the door, and took one long
stride into the room. Stocky, heavy-muscled, he stood regarding them,
a frown of suspicion drawing his face into ugly lines. Plainly he was
disturbed by this laughing good-humor where he had expected misery and
hopelessness and tears. He moved the muzzle of a detonite pistol back
and forth.

* * * * *

"You haff been drinking!" he stated at last. "You are intoxicated--all
of you!" His eyes darted searching glances about the little room that
was too bare to hide any cause for inebriation.

It was Mam'selle Diane who answered him with an emphatic shake of her
dark head; an engaging smile tugged at the corners of her lips. "_Mais
non!_ my dear Herr Schwartzmann," she assured him: "it is joy--just
happiness at again approaching our Moon--and in s