lized his tremendous
tools, and the wall of the _Ancient Mariner_ was neatly patched with
relux smoothed over as perfectly as before. A second time, using some of
the relux he had brought within the ship, and the inner wall was
rebuilt. The job was absolutely perfect, save that now, where there had
been lux, there was an outer wall of relux.

The main generator was crumpled up, and torn out. The auxiliary
generators would have to carry the load. The great cables were swiftly
repaired in the same manner, a perfect cylinder forming about them, and
a piece of relux from the store Arcot had sliced from the enemy ship,
welding them perfectly under enormous pressure, pressure that made them
flow perfectly into one another as heat alone could not.

In less than half an hour the ship was patched up, the power room
generally repaired, save for a few minor things that had to be replaced
from the stores. The main generator was gone, but that was not an
essential. The door was straightened and the job done.

In an hour they were ready to proceed.

Chapter XIV

INTERGALACTIC SPACE

"Well, Sirius has retreated a bit," observed Arcot. The star was indeed
several trillions of miles away. Evidently they had not been motionless
as they had thought, but the interference of the Thessian ship had
thrown their machine off.

"Shall we go back, or go on?" asked Morey.

"The ship works. Why return?" asked Wade. "I vote we go on."

"Seconded," added Arcot.

"If they who know most of the ship vote for a continuance of the
journey, then assuredly we who know so little can only abide by their
judgment. Let us continue," said Zezdon Afthen gravely.

Space was suddenly black about them. Sirius was gone, all the jewels of
the heavens were gone in the black of swift flight. Ten seconds later
Arcot lowered the space-control. Black behind them the night of space
was pricked by points of light, the infinite multitude of the stars.
Before them lay--nothing. The utter emptiness of space between the
galaxies.

"Thlek Styrs! What happened?" asked Morey in amazement, his pet Venerian
phrase rolling out in his astonishment.

"Tried an experiment, and it was overly successful," replied Arcot, a
worried look on his face. "I tried combining the Thessian high speed
_time_ distortion with our high _speed_ space distortion--both on low
power. 'There ain't no sich animals,' as the old agriculturist remarked
of the giraffe. God knows what speed