ce. This vastness that was beyond the power of
human mind to grasp ceased to be formidable--he was part of it. He felt
buoyed up; and he led the way confidently toward the control-room door
where Schwartzmann stood.

The scientist, whom Schwartzmann had called Herr Doktor Kreiss, was
beside the pilot. He was leaning forward to search the stars in the
blackness ahead, but the pilot turned often to stare through the rear
lookouts as if drawn in fearful fascination by what was there. Chet took
the controls at Schwartzmann's order; the pilot saluted with a trembling
hand and vanished into the cabin at the rear.

"Ready for flying orders, Doctor," the new pilot told Herr Kreiss. "I'll
put her where you say--within reason."

Behind him he heard the choked voice of Mademoiselle Diane: "_Regardez!
Ah, mon Dieu_, the beauty of it! This loveliness--it hurts!"

* * * * *

One hand was pressed to her throat; her face was turned as the pilot's
had been that she might stare and stare at a quite impossible moon--a
great half-disk of light in the velvet dark.

"This loveliness--it hurts!" Chet looked, too, and knew what Diane was
feeling. There was a catch of emotion in his own throat--a feeling that
was almost fear.

A giant half-moon!--and he knew it was the Earth. Golden Earth-light
came to them in a flooding glory; the blazing sun struck on it from
above to bring out half the globe in brilliant gold that melted to
softest, iridescent, rainbow tints about its edge. Below, hung
motionless in the night, was another sphere. Like a reflection of Earth
in the depths of some Stygian lake, the old moon shone, too, in a
half-circle of light.

Small wonder that these celestial glories brought a gasp of delight from
Diane, or drew into lines of fear the face of that other pilot who saw
only his own world slipping away. But Chet Bullard, Master Pilot of the
World, swung back to scan a star-chart that the scientist was holding,
then to search out a similar grouping in the black depths into which
they were plunging, and to bring the cross-hairs of a rigidly mounted
telescope upon that distant target.

"How far?" he asked himself in a half-spoken thought, "--how far have we
come?"

* * * * *

There was an instrument that ticked off the seconds in this seemingly
timeless void. He pressed a small lever beside it, and, beneath a glass
that magnified the readings, there passe