s from the
viewplate controls, relaxed, and dropped off to sleep.

"What made me so tired--wonder--GOD!" He straightened with a jerk, and
his hands flew to the controls. The view on the machine suddenly
retreated, flew back with a velocity inconceivable. Earth dropped away
from the ship with an apparent velocity a thousand times that of light;
it was a tiny ball, a pinpoint, gone, the sun--a minute disc--gone--then
the apparatus was flashing views into focus from the other side of the
ship. The assistant did not reply. Evans' hands were growing ineffably
heavy, his whole body yearned for sleep. Slowly, clumsily he pawed for a
little stud. Somehow his hand found it, and the ship reeled suddenly,
little jerks, as the code message was flung out in a beam of such
tremendous power that the sheer radiation pressure made it noticeable.
Earth would be notified. The system would be warned. But light, slow
crawling thing, would take hours to cross the gulf of space, and radio
travels no faster.

Half conscious, fighting for his faculties with all his will, the pilot
turned to the screen. A ship! A strange, glistening thing streamlined to
the nth degree, every spare corner rounded till the resistance was at
the irreducible minimum. But, in the great pilotport of the stranger,
the patrol pilot saw faces, and gasped in surprise as he saw them!
Terrible faces, blotched, contorted. Patches of white skin, patches of
brown, patches of black, blotched and twisted across the faces. Long,
lean faces, great wide flat foreheads above, skulls strangely squared,
more box-like than man's rounded skull. The ears were large, pointed
tips at the top. Their hair was a silky mane that extended low over the
forehead, and ran back, spreading above the ears, and down the neck.

Then, as that emotion of surprise and astonishment weakened his will
momentarily, oblivion came, with what seemed a fleeting instant of
memories. His life seemed to flash before his mind in serried rank, a
file of events, his childhood, his life, his marriage, his wife, an
image of smiling comfort, then the years, images of great and near great
men, his knowledge of history, pictures of great war of 2074, pictures
of the attackers of the Black Star--then calm oblivion, quiet blankness.

The long, silent ship that had hovered near him turned, and pointed
toward the pinhead of matter that glowed brilliantly in the flaming
jewel box of the heavens. It was gone in an instant, rus