e
produced an almost superstitious terror. Formerly it had seemed a
distant but sunlit world, flecked with white clouds and with sprawling
differentiations of color beneath them.

Now it did not look like a solid thing at all. It looked like a hole in
creation. One could see ten thousand million stars of every imaginable
tint and shade. But where the Earth should be there seemed a vast
nothingness. It looked like an opening to annihilation. It looked like
the veritable Pit of Darkness which is the greatest horror men have ever
imagined, and since those in the ship were without weight it seemed that
they were falling into it.

Joe knew better, of course. So did the others. But that was the look of
things, and that was the feeling. One did not feel in danger of death,
but of extinction--which, in cold fact, is very much worse.

Lights glowed on the outside of the Platform to guide the supply ship to
it. There were red and green and blue and harsh blue-white electric
bulbs. They were bright and distinct, but the feeling of loneliness
above that awful appearance of the Pit was appalling. No small child
alone at night had ever so desolate a sensation of isolation as the four
in the small ship.

But Joe painstakingly played the buttons of the steering-rocket control
board. The ship surged, and turned, and surged forward again. Mike, at
the communicator, said, "They say slow up, Joe."

Joe obeyed, but he was tense. Haney and the Chief were at other
portholes, looking out. The Chief said heavily, "Fellas, I'm going to
admit I never felt so lonesome in my life!"

"I'm glad I've got you fellows with me!" Haney admitted guiltily.

"The job's almost over," said Joe.

The ship's own hull, outside the ports, glowed suddenly in a light-beam
from the Platform. The small, brief surges of acceleration which sent
the ship on produced tremendous emotional effects. When the Platform was
only one mile away, Haney switched on the ship's searchlights. They
stabbed through emptiness with absolutely no sign of their existence
until they touched the steel hull of the satellite.

Mike said sharply: "Slow up some more, Joe."

He obeyed again. It would not be a good idea to ram the Platform after
they had come so far to reach it.

They drifted slowly, slowly, slowly toward it. The monstrous Pit of
Darkness which was the night side of Earth seemed almost about to engulf
the Platform. They were a few hundred feet higher than the great met