white face of Mademoiselle Diane;
then back to the controls, where his hand, without conscious volition,
was reaching to move a metal ball.

"Missed it!" he assured himself. "Hit the fringe of the air--just the
very outside. If we'd been twenty thousand feet nearer!..." He was
moving the ball; their bow was swinging. He steadied it and set the
ship on an approximate course.

"A stern chase!" he said aloud. "All our momentum to be overcome--but
it's easy sailing now!"

He pushed the ball forward to the limit, and the explosion-motor gave
thunderous response.

CHAPTER IV

_The Return to the Dark Moon_

No man faces death in so shocking a form without feeling the effects.
Death had flicked them with a finger of flame and had passed them by.
Chet Bullard found his hands trembling uncontrollably as he fumbled
for a book and opened it. The tables of figures printed there were
blurred at first to his eyes, but he forced himself to forget the
threat that was past, for there was another menace to consider now.

And uppermost in his mind, when his thoughts came back into some
approximate order, was condemnation of himself for an opportunity that
was gone.

"I could have jumped him," he told himself with bitter self-reproach;
"I could have grabbed the pistol from Kreiss--the man was petrified."
And then Chet had to admit a fact there was no use of denying: "I was
as paralyzed as he was," he said, and only knew he had spoken aloud
when he saw the puzzled look that crossed Harkness' face.

Harkness and Diane had drawn near. In a far corner of the little room
Schwartzmann had motioned to Kreiss to join him; they were as far away
from the others as could be managed. Schwartzmann, Chet judged, needed
some scientific explanation of these disturbing events; also he
needed to take the detonite pistol from Kreiss' hand and jam it into
his own hand. His eyes, at Chet's unconscious exclamation, had come
with instant suspicion toward the two men.

"Forty-seven hours, Walt," the pilot said, and repeated it loudly for
Schwartzmann's benefit; "--forty-seven hours before we return to this
spot. We are driving out into space; we've crossed the orbit of the
Dark Moon, and we're doing twenty thousand miles an hour.

"Now we must decelerate. It will take twenty hours to check us to zero
speed; then twenty-seven more to shoot us back to this same point
in space, allowing, of course, for a second deceleration. The same
figuring with on