she
should be peopled--that, my friend, is a chance well worth taking!"

The Secretary called in a group of guards, who escorted the small
package of priceless metal to the space-ship. Before the massive door
was sealed the friends bade each other farewell.

"... I will keep in touch with you on the ultra-wave," the Captain
concluded. "After all, I do not blame the Council for refusing to allow
the other ship to go out. Ten pounds of iron will be a fearful loss to
the world. If we _should_ find iron, however, see to it that she loses
no time in following us."

"No fear of that! If you find iron she will set out at once, and all
space will soon be full of vessels. Goodbye."

The last opening was sealed and Nerado shot the great vessel into the
air. Up and up, out beyond the last tenuous trace of atmosphere, on and
on through space it flew with ever-increasing velocity until Nevia's
gigantic blue sun had been left so far behind that it became a splendid
blue-white star. Then, projectors cut off to save the precious iron
whose disintegration furnished them power, for week after week Captain
Nerado and his venturesome crew of scientists drifted idly through the
illimitable void.

There is no need to describe in detail Nerado's tremendous voyage.
Suffice it to say that he found a G-type dwarf star possessing
planets--not one planet only, but six ... seven ... eight ... yes, at
least nine! And most of those worlds were themselves centers of
attraction around which were circling one or more worldlets! Nerado
thrilled with joy as he applied a full retarding force, and every
creature aboard that great vessel had to peer into a plate or through a
telescope before he could believe that planets other than Nevia did in
reality exist!

Velocity checked to the merest crawl, as space-speeds go, and with
electro-magnetic detector screens full out, the Nevian vessel crept
toward our sun. Finally the detectors encountered an obstacle, a
conductive substance which the patterns showed conclusively to be
practically pure iron. Iron--an enormous mass of it--floating alone out
in space! Without waiting to investigate the nature, appearance, or
structure of the precious mass, Nerado ordered power into the converters
and drove an enormous softening field of force upon the object--a force
of such a nature that it would condense the metallic iron into an
allotropic modification of much smaller bulk; a red, viscous, extremely
dense and hea