n their radio receiver, and he set it for the
newscasting waves that went forth from the most powerful station of
Earth, the Press Tower of New York. A voice came to them faintly. For
a time it vied with the muffled roar of their thundering exhaust; then
it lost volume, faded, and was finally gone.

Their last contact with Earth was severed. There remained only
blackness, and a great abyss through which they were plunging.

* * * * *

Harkness busied himself with calculations. He would have spoken, but
the silence that followed the vanished voice of Earth had robbed his
own voice of control.

A telescope sight was fixed rigid with the axis of their ship. He
looked through it, moved their controls, and brought the cross-hairs
of his instrument to bear upon a star.

"That's about right," he said quietly. "I got all the information that
the observatories had on the orbit of the Dark Moon. It is circling
the Earth from north to south. It coincided for a short time with our
own moon when it first hit; that's what kicked up the big wave and
jarred us up. But it swung off and seems to have settled down in its
own orbit now.

"Two hundred thousand miles away is what they make it, though I think
that is more or less of a guess. I wish we could measure our speed."
He looked at the earth-induction speed-indicator. Useless now, it
registered zero.

"Well," he added, "we are shooting for the North Star. We will pass
close to the Dark Moon's orbit; it should be about over the Pole on
this date. And there is one good safe bet, anyhow; there is nothing
between here and there to stop us."

He was being weakly facetious, but his efforts met with an
enthusiastic response. The tension of the moment, it was plain, had
not affected Harkness alone. But it was many hours before the error of
his statement was made manifest to all.

An island, faintly luminous, lay ahead. It grew to enormous size as
they dashed upon it. Harkness sprang for the controls, but, before he
could reach them, they had struck the vast field of pale green light,
flashed through it, and left it diminishing in size behind them. Then,
other lights, not brilliant, but like phosphorescent bodies, that came
and went and flashed by with blinding speed.

* * * * *

Another luminous area rushed at them from ahead. At first it was a
speck, then an island, and then a continent in size, and through it
moved