"Good morning, Miss Vaneman. Several things happened. He fell into the
controls, turning on all the juice. We left shortly afterward. I tried
to shut the power off, and in doing so I balled things up worse than
ever. Then I went to sleep, and just woke up."

"Have you any idea where we are?"

"No, but I can make a fair estimate, I think," and glancing at the empty
chamber in which the bar had been, he took out his notebook and pen and
figured for a few minutes. As he finished, he drew himself along by a
handrail to one of the windows, then to another. He returned with a
puzzled expression on his face and made a long calculation.

"I don't know exactly what to make of this," he said thoughtfully. "We
are so far away from the earth that even the fixed stars are
unrecognizable. The power was on exactly forty-eight hours, since that
is the life of that particular bar under full current. We should still
be close to our own solar system, since it is theoretically impossible
to develop any velocity greater than that of light. But in fact, we
have. I know enough about astronomy to recognize the fixed stars from
any point within a light-year or so of the sun, and I can't see a single
familiar star. I never could see how mass could be a function of
velocity, and now I am convinced that it is not. We have been
accelerating for forty-eight hours!"

He turned to Dorothy.

"While we were unconscious, Miss Vaneman, we had probably attained a
velocity of something like seven billion four hundred thirteen million
miles per second, and that is the approximate speed at which we are now
traveling. We must be nearly six quadrillion miles, and that is a space
of several hundred light-years--away from our solar system, or, more
plainly, about six times as far away from our earth as the North Star
is. We couldn't see our sun with a telescope, even if we knew which way
to look for it."

* * * * *

At this paralyzing news, Dorothy's face turned white and Margaret
Spencer quietly fainted in her seat.

"Then we can never get back?" asked Dorothy slowly.

At this question, Perkins' self-control gave way and his thin veneer of
decency disappeared completely.

"You got us into this whole thing!" he screamed as he leaped at Dorothy
with murderous fury gleaming in his pale eyes and his fingers curved
into talons. Instead of reaching her, however, he merely sprawled
grotesquely in midair, and DuQuesne knocked