"'Forty-seven hours' you have said; in forty-seven hours you will land
us on the Dark Moon. If you do not,"--he raised the pistol
suggestively--"remember that the pilot, Max, can always take us back
to Earth. You are not indispensable."

Chet looked at the dark face and its determined and ominous scowl.
"You're a cheerful sort of soul, aren't you?" he demanded. "Do you
have any faint idea of what a job this is? Do you know we will shoot
another two hundred thousand miles straight out before I can check
this ship? Then we come back; and meanwhile the Dark Moon has gone on
its way. Had you thought that there's a lot of room to get lost in out
here?"

"Forty-seven hours!" said Schwartzmann. "I would advise that you do
not lose your way."

Chet shot one quizzical glance at Harkness.

"That," he said, "makes it practically unanimous."

Schwartzmann, with an elaborate show of courtesy, escorted Diane
Delacouer to a cabin where she might rest. At a questioning look
between Diane and Harkness, their captor reassured them.

"Mam'selle shall be entirely safe," he said. "She may join you here
whenever she wishes. As for you,"--he was speaking to Harkness--"I
will permit you to stay here. I could tie you up but this iss not
necessary."

And Harkness must have agreed that it was indeed unnecessary, for
either Kreiss or Max, or some other of Schwartzmann's men, was at his
side continuously from that moment on.

* * * * *

Chet would have liked a chance for a quiet talk and an exchange of
ideas. It seemed that somewhere, somehow, he should be able to find an
answer to their problem. He stared moodily out into the blackness
ahead, where a distant star was seemingly their goal. Harkness stood
at his side or paced back and forth in the little room, until he threw
himself, at last, upon a cot.

And always the great stern-blast roared; muffled by the insulated
walls, its unceasing thunder came at last to be unheard. To the pilot
there was neither sound nor motion. His directional sights were
unswervingly upon that distant star ahead. Seemingly they were
suspended, helpless and inert, in a black void. But for the occasional
glowing masses of strange living substance that flashed past in this
ocean of space, he must almost have believed they were motionless--a
dead ship in a dead, black night.

But the luminous things flashed and were gone--and their coming,
strangely, was from astern; they flic