and Nadia came often to the _Sirius_, and were
accompanied frequently by Verna Pickering, who claimed anew her ancient
right of "kicking around under foot," wherever Brandon and Westfall
might chance to be--and at such times General Crowninshield was
practically certain to appear. And upon days when the beautiful brunette
did not appear, the commandant generally found it necessary to inspect
in person something in the _Arcturus_.

Day after day passed, and even the new and ultra-powerful detector
screens of the _Sirius_ remained unresponsive and cold. Day after day
the plates before the doubled lookouts and observers remained blank.
Power flowed smoothly and unfailingly into the cosmic receptors, and
the products of conversion were discharged with equal smoothness and
regularity from the forty-five gigantic driving projectors. The tractor
beam held its heavy burden easily and the generators functioned
perfectly. And finally a planet began to loom up in the stern lookout
plates.

Verna, the irrepressible, was in the control room of the _Sirius_,
quarreling adroitly with Brandon and deftly flirting with Crowninshield.
Glancing into the control screen she saw the planet in its end block,
then studied the instruments briefly.

"We're heading for _Mars_!" she declared with conviction. "I thought
it looked that way yesterday, but supposed it must be only apparent--a
trick of piloting or something about the orbit. I thought of course you
were taking us back home--but you can't _possibly_ get to Tellus on any
such course as this!"

"Sure not," Brandon replied easily. "Certainly it's Mars. Isn't that
where the _Arcturus_ started out for? Whoever said we were going to
Tellus? Of course, if any of the passengers want to go right back the
IPC will undoubtedly furnish transportation _gratis_. But paste this in
your hat, Verna, for future reference--when spacehounds start out to go
anywhere they _go_ there, even if they have to spend a year or so on
minus time to do it!"

Closer and closer they approached the red planet, swinging around in a
wide arc in order to make their course coincide exactly with the pilot
ray of check station M14, which was now precisely in its scheduled
location in space. At the chief pilot's desk in the control room of the
_Arcturus_, Breckenridge checked in with the station, then calculated
rapidly the instant of their touching the specially-built bumper
platforms of spring steel, hemp, and fiber whic