himself alone in space?" He stared thoughtfully at
the control that would make the ship perfectly transparent, perfectly
invisible.

"I wonder if it would?" said Morey grasping Arcot's idea. "What do you
say we try it?" Arcot turned the little switch--and where there had been
the ship, it was no more--it was gone!

Fuller stirred uneasily in his bed, tightly strapped as he was. The
effects of the drug were wearing off. Sleepily he yawned--stretched, and
blindly, his heavy eyes still closed, released the straps that held him
in bed. Yawning widely he opened his eyes--with a sudden start sat
upright--then, with an excellent imitation of an Indian on the warpath,
he leaped from his bed, and started to run wildly across the floor. His
eyes were raised to the place where the ceiling should have been--he
called lustily in alarm--then suddenly he was flying up--and crashed
heavily against the invisible ceiling! His face was a picture of utter
astonishment as he fell lightly to the floor--then slowly it changed,
and took on a chagrined smile--he understood!

He spun around as loud cries suddenly resounded from Wade's room across
the hall--then there was a dull thud, as he too, forgetting the
weightlessness, jumped and hit the ceiling. Then the cries were gone,
like the snuffing of a candle. From the control room there rose loud
laughter--and a moment later they felt more normal, as they again saw
the four strong walls about them.

Wade sighed heavily and shook his head.

They were approaching the planet visibly now. In the twelve hours that
had passed they had covered a million miles, for now they were falling
toward the planet under its attraction. It glowed before them now in
wonderous splendour, a mighty disc of molten silver.

For the last twenty-four hours they had been reducing their speed
relative to Venus, to insure their forming an orbit about the planet,
rather than shoot around it and back into space. Their velocity had been
over a hundred miles a second part of the way, but now it had been
reduced to ten. The gravity of the planet was urging them forward at
ever increasing speed, and their problem became more acute moment by
moment.

"We'll never make it on the power units alone, out here in space," said
Arcot seriously. "We'll just shoot around the planet. I'll tell you how
we can do it, though. We'll circle around it, entering its atmosphere on
the daylight side, and shoot into the upper limits of its atm