e, to invent that all-use material, _Indurate_, the formula
for which had been stolen and which therefore had never appeared on the
commercial market. Norris would talk about that for hours. If you
inadvertently started him on the subject a queer glint would enter his
eyes, and he would dig around in his pocket for a chunk of the black
substance.

"Did I ever show you a piece of this?" he would say. "Look at it
carefully. Notice the smooth grainless texture--hard and yet not
brittle. You wouldn't think that it was formed in a gaseous state, then
changed to a liquid and finally to a clay-like material that could be
worked with ease. A thousand years after your body has returned to dust,
that piece of _Indurate_ will still exist, unchanged, unworn. Erosion
will have little effect upon it. Beside it granite, steel are nothing.
If only I had the formula ..."

But he had only half the formula, the half he himself had developed. The
other part was locked in the brain of Ganeth-Klae, and Ganeth-Klae had
disappeared. What had become of him was a mystery. Norris perhaps had
felt the loss more than any one, and he had offered the major part of
his savings as a reward for information leading to the scientist's
whereabouts.

Our party--eighteen couples and Navigator Norris--had gathered together
and subsequently left Earth in answer to a curious advertisement that
had appeared in the Sunday edition of the London _Times_.

WANTED: _A group of married men and women, young, courageous,
educated, tired of political and social restrictions, interested
in extra-terrestrial colonization. Financial resources no
qualification._

After we had been weeded out, interviewed and rigorously questioned,
Norris had taken us into the hangar, waved a hand toward the _Marie
Galante_ and explained the details.

The _Marie Galante_ was a cruiser-type ship, stripped down to essentials
to maintain speed, but equipped with the latest of everything. For a
short run to Venus, for which it was originally built, it would
accommodate a passenger list of ninety.

But Norris wasn't interested in that kind of run. He had knocked out
bulkheads, reconverted music room and ballroom into living quarters. He
had closed and sealed all observation ports, so that only in the bridge
cuddy could one see into space.

"We shall travel beyond the orbit of the sun," he said. "There will be
no turning back; for the search for a new world, a new life, is