Chet, too, stopped to look; there had been no port-holes in that
inner room where they had been confined.

He knew what to expect; he knew how awe-inspiring would be the sight of
strange, luminous bodies--great islands of light--masses of
animalculae--that glowed suddenly, then melted again into velvet black.
A whirl of violet grew almost golden in sudden motion; Chet knew it for
an invisible monster of space. Glowingly luminous as it threw itself
upon a subtle mass of shimmering light, it faded like a flickering flame
and went dark as its motion ceased.

Life!--life, everywhere in this ocean of space! And on every hand was
death. "Not surprising," Chet realized, "that these other Earthmen are
awed and trembling!"

The sun was above them; its light struck squarely down through the upper
ports. This was polarized light--there was nothing outside to reflect or
refract it--and, coming as a straight beam from above, it made a
brilliant circle upon the floor from which it was diffused throughout
the room. It was as if the floor itself was the illuminating agent.

No eye could bear to look into the glare from above; nor was there need,
for the other ports drew the eyes with their black depths of unplumbed
space.

Black!--so velvet as to seem almost tangible! Could one have reached out
a hand, that blackness, it seemed, must be a curtain that the hand could
draw aside, where unflickering points of light pricked through the dark
to give promise of some radiant glory beyond.

* * * * *

They had seen it before, these three, yet Chet caught the eyes of
Harkness and Diane and knew that his own eyes must share something of
the look he saw in theirs--something of reverent wonder and a strange
humility before this evidence of transcendent greatness.

Their own immediate problem seemed gone. The tyranny of this glowering
human and his men--the efforts of the whole world and its struggling
millions--how absurdly unimportant it all was! How it faded to
insignificance! And yet....

Chet came from the reverie that held him. There was one man by whom this
beauty was unseen. Herr Schwartzmann was angrily ordering them on, and,
surprisingly, Chet laughed aloud.

This problem, he realized, was _his_ problem--his to solve with the help
of the other two. And it was not insignificant; he knew with some sudden
wordless knowledge that there was nothing in all the great scheme but
that it had its importan