hmen are
awed and trembling!"

The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the
upper ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to
reflect or refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it
made a brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused
throughout the room. It was as if the floor itself was the
illuminating agent.

No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there
need, for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of
unplumbed space.

Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached
out a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand
could draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through
the dark to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.

* * * * *

They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of
Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of
the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange
humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.

Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering
human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling
millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to
insignificance! And yet....

Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom
this beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them
on, and, surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.

This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the
help of the other two. And it was _not_ insignificant; he knew with
some sudden wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great
scheme but that it had its importance. This vastness that was beyond
the power of human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part
of it. He felt buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the
control-room door where Schwartzmann stood.

The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was
beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the
blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear
lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet
took the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a
trembling hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.

"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss.
"I'll pu