tracted. A panel of signal lights was
immediately below it where the operator could see it without taking his
eyes off the tellecarbon. When we took off I was in the driver's seat,
Lahoma standing beside me. We had found that when she thought of
hamburger sandwiches the tellecarbon became antigravitational, just as
when I thought of chickens being killed.

It took the combined power of our thoughts to lift the ship. As we found
out later, the ship rose sluggishly from the water and floated
erratically upward, reaching the stratosphere in a little over an hour.
By midnight we were over two thousand miles above the Earth's surface
and rising more and more rapidly. By then both of us were exhausted and
spelling each other off every ten minutes.

Jud was constantly determining our position and speed. At two o'clock in
the morning he relieved Lahoma and concentrated on the tellecarbon to
give us more forward speed. By eight o'clock in the morning our speed
and direction of travel were correct for escape from the Earth's gravity
field toward the planet Mars, and I crawled out of the control booth,
practically a wreck.

* * * * *

From there on it was smooth sailing. We would coast along for two months
before nearing Mars, and play with the gadgets we had brought along for
taking all sorts of measurements in outer space.

Space is very different than most writers picture it. Instead of being
dark it is intensely bright in all directions. It was fortunate that we
had movable dark shields on each porthole. By varying the number over a
porthole we could block out most of the light and keep our objective in
view.

Our most amazing discovery was that the temperature of interplanetary
space is not absolutely zero. Our outside thermostat, carefully shielded
against all rays, that is, infrared, visible, and ultraviolet, and in
the vacuum of space, showed a constant temperature of minus one hundred
and three degrees F. at all times in outer space. Jud explained that
this was probably due to x-rays and cosmic rays which could penetrate
the protective shield.

On the fifty-eighth day after leaving the earth, Jud, at the forward
telescope, became suddenly excited. Dashing from the telescope to the
chart table he began scribbling figures, ignoring our queries as to what
was wrong. After fifteen minutes of figuring he straightened up, a
worried frown on his face.

Muttering, "I was afraid of that," h