greed. "Sure
everything's all x, big boy?"

"To nineteen decimals," he declared. "You couldn't squeeze another frank
into our accumulators with a proof-bar, and since they're sending us all
the power we want to draw, we won't need to touch our batteries or tap
our own beam until we're almost to Jupiter. To cap the climax, what it
takes to make big medicine on those spherical friends of ours, we've
got. We're not sitting on top of the world, ace--we've perched exactly
at the apex of the entire universe!"

"How long is it going to take?"

"Don't know. Haven't figured it yet, but it'll be _beaucoup_ days," and
the two wanderers from far-distant Earth settled down to the routine of
a long and uneventful journey.

They gave Saturn and his spectacular rings a wide berth and sped on,
with ever-increasing velocity. Past the outer satellites, on and on,
the good ship _Forlorn Hope_ flew into the black-and-brilliant depths of
interplanetary space. Saturn was an ever-diminishing disk beneath them:
above them was Jupiter's thin crescent, growing ever larger and more
bright, and the Monarch of the Solar System, remaining almost stationary
day after day, increasing steadily in apparent diameter and in
brilliance.

* * * * *

Although the voyage from Titan to Ganymede was long, it was not
monotonous, for there was much work to be done in the designing and
fabrication of the various units which were to comprise the ultra-radio
transmitting station. In the various compartments of the _Forlorn Hope_
there were sundry small motors, blowers, coils, condensers, force-field
generators, and other items which Stevens could use with little or no
alteration; but for the most part he had to build everything himself.
Thus it was that time passed quickly; so quickly that Jupiter loomed
large and the Saturnian beam of power began to attenuate almost before
the Terrestrials realized that their journey was drawing to an end.

"Our beam's falling apart fast," Stevens read his meters carefully, then
swung his communicator beam toward Jupiter. "We aren't getting quite
enough power to hold our acceleration at normal--think I'll cut now,
while we're still drawing enough to let the Titanians know we're off
their beam. We've got lots of power of our own now; and we're getting
pretty close to enemy territory, so they may locate that heavy beam.
Have you found Ganymede yet?"

"Yes, it will be on the other side of Jupite