other brighter lights. This time a slight suggestion of an
impact was felt. Here was matter of a form they could not guess. It
was Chet who pointed to the glass of their control room. The heavy
lights of the lookouts were smeared with sticky fluid that drew
together in trickling streams.

"Nothing between us and the Dark Moon?" he asked of Harkness. "And
space is an empty void? We Earth-creatures are a conceited lot."

"Meaning?" the girl questioned.

"Meaning that because we live on Earth--walk on solid ground, swim in
the water and fly in the air--we deny the existence of life in space.
There's the answer written in the blood of some life that was snuffed
out as we hit it."

Harkness shook his head doubtfully. "Matter of some sort," he
admitted, "and the serpents came from somewhere; but, as for the rest,
the idea that the ocean of space is filled with life as our
Earth-oceans are--creatures living and moving through unknown fields
of force...." He did not finish the denial, but looked with wondering
gaze at the myriad points that flashed softly into glowing masses and
darted aside before their onward rush.

It was hours later that he checked their flight. Slowly at first he
cut off the exhaust from their stern and opened the bow valve.
Slowly, for their wild speed must slacken as it had been built up, by
slow degrees. The self-adjusting floor swung forward and up. Their
deceleration was like the pull of gravity, and now straight ahead
seemed down.

More hours, and they were at rest, floating in an ethereal ocean, an
ocean teeming with strange life. Each face was pressed close to a
lookout port. No one of the three could speak; each was too absorbed
in the story his eyes were reading--this story of a strange, new
existence where no life should have been.

Animalculae. They came in swarms; cloud masses of them floated past;
and swirls of phosphorescent fire marked the presence of larger
creatures that moved among them. Large and small, each living creature
was invisible until it moved; then came the greenish light, like
phosphorescence and yet unlike.

* * * * *

Still Harkness could not force himself to believe the irrefutable
evidence. What of astronomy? he asked himself. Why was this matter not
visible through telescopes? Why did it not make its presence known
through interference? Through refraction of light?... And then he
realized the incredible distance within the scop