in charts beneath the ground glass
top of the control table. "Get what sleep you can the next few enaros.
Presently I shall want every man on duty and at his station."

He glanced at me curiously, as the observer had done, but saluted and
left with only a brief, "Yes, sir!" I returned the salute and turned my
attention again to the charts.

The navigating room of an interplanetary ship is without doubt
unfamiliar ground to most, so it might be well for me to say that such
ships have, for the most part, twin charts, showing progress in two
dimensions; to use land terms, lateral and vertical. These charts are
really no more than large sheets of ground glass, ruled in both
directions with fine black lines, representing all relatively close
heavenly bodies by green lights of varying sizes. The ship itself is
represented by a red spark and the whole is, of course, entirely
automatic in action, the instruments comprising the chart being operated
by super-radio reflexes.

* * * * *

Jaron, the charts showed me at a glance, was now far behind. Almost
directly above--it is necessary to resort to these unscientific terms to
make my meaning clear--was the tiny world Elon, home of the friendly but
impossibly dull winged people, the only ones in the known Universe. I
was there but once, and found them almost laughably like our common
dragon-flies on Earth; dragon-flies that grow some seven feet long, and
with gauzy wings of amazing strength.

Directly ahead, on both charts, was a brilliantly glowing sphere of
green--our destination. I made some rapid mental calculations, studying
the few fine black lines between the red spark that was our ship, and
the nearest edge of the great green sphere. I glanced at our speed
indicator and the attraction meter. The little red slide that moved
around the rim of the attraction meter was squarely at the top, showing
that the attraction was from straight ahead; the great black hand was
nearly a third of the way around the face.

We were very close; two hours would bring us into the atmospheric
envelope. In less than two hours and a half, we would be in the Control
City of what is now called the Forgotten Planet!

I glanced forward, through the thick glass partitions, into the
operating room. Three men stood there, watching intently; they too, were
wondering why we visited the unfriendly world.

The planet itself loomed up straight ahead, a great half-circle,