tubes are running hot. She won't hold
together five minutes longer!"

Captain King opened his book, and in that small steel room, unadorned
save for stack upon stack of bookcases, the brief but solemn ceremony
joining two young lives was read--its solemnity only intensified by its
unique accompaniment. For from Brandon at the primary controls, through
the power-room of the _Sirius_ and the relay-station upon Mars, to the
immense Interplanetary transmitter upon Earth, the greatest radio and
television engineers of two planets were fighting overdriven equipment,
trying to hold an almost impossible connection, in order that Nadia
Newton's mother and sister might be present at her wedding, hundreds of
millions of miles distant in space!

"I pronounce you man and wife. Whom God hath joined, let no man put
asunder." The sacred old ritual ended and Captain King picked up
the bride in his great arms as though she were a baby, kissed her
vigorously, and set her down in front of the transmitter. In the midst
of the joyous confusion that ensued a tearing, rattling crash came from
the speaker and the screen went blank.

"There!" lamented MacDonald from the power room. "I knew they'd blow!
There goes my whole secondary bank--eight perfectly good ten-nineteens
all shot to...."

"That's too bad, but it couldn't be helped; they went for a good cause,"
interrupted Brandon. "I'll come down and help clean up the mess."

* * * * *

Leaving the bridal party, he made his way rapidly to the power room,
where he found MacDonald and the two Martians inspecting the smoking
remains of what had been the secondary bank of their powerful
ultra-transmitter. Spare parts in abundance were on hand, and it was
not long until the damaged section was apparently as good as new.

"Now to try her out," Brandon announced. "We want to give her a good
workout, but there's no use trying the I-P stations any more--they're
altogether too hard to handle at this range. Czuv said something about
an unknown race of monstrosities at the south pole of Jupiter--let's try
it on them for a while."

He flung the field of force out into space, as responsive to his will
as a well-trained horse, and guided it toward the southern limb of that
gigantic world. Down and down the projection plunged, through mile after
mile of reeking, steaming fog, impenetrable to earthly eyes. Finally it
came to rest upon the surface, hundreds of feet deep in