es lit. "Kent, that's a real chance! There must be some ships
in that pack with fuel in them, and we can use the space-suits to
explore for them!"

"Look, we're beginning to curve in around the pack now!" Liggett
exclaimed.

The _Pallas_, as though loath to pass the wreck-pack, was curving
inward to follow its rim. In the next hours it continued to sail slowly
around the great pack, approaching closer and closer to its edge.

In those hours Kent and Crain and all in the ship watched with a
fascinated interest that even knowledge of their own peril could not
kill. They could see swift-lined passenger-ships of the Pluto and
Neptune runs shouldering against small space-yachts with the insignia of
Mars or Venus on their bows. Wrecked freighters from Saturn or Earth
floated beside rotund grain-boats from Jupiter.

The debris among the pack's wrecks was just as varied, holding fragments
of metal, dark meteors of differing size--and many human bodies. Among
these were some clad in the insulated space-suits, with their
transparent glassite helmets. Kent wondered what wreck they had
abandoned hastily in those suits, only to be swept with it into the
dead-area, to die in their suits.

By the end of that ship-day, the _Pallas_, having floated almost
completely around the wreck-pack, finally struck the wrecks at its edge
with a jarring shock; then bobbed for a while and lay still. From
pilot-house and deck windows the men looked eagerly forth.

* * * * *

Their ship floated at the wreck-pack's edge. Directly to its right
floated a sleek, shining Uranus-Jupiter passenger-ship whose bows had
been smashed in by a meteor. On their left bobbed an unmarked freighter
of the old type with projecting rocket-tubes, apparently intact. Beyond
them in the wreck-pack lay another Uranus craft, a freighter, and,
beyond it, stretched the countless other wrecks.

Captain Crain summoned the crew together again on the middle-deck.

"Men, we've reached the wreck-pack at the dead-area's center, and here
we'll stay until the end of time unless we get out under our own power.
Mr. Kent has suggested a possible way of doing so, which I consider
highly feasible.

"He has suggested that in some of the ships in the wreck-pack may be
found enough fuel to enable us to escape from the dead-area, once it is
transferred to this ship. I am going to permit him to explore the
wreck-pack with a party in space suits, and I am asking