r out here." Cleveland was staring at the
calculator. "It's constant, of course, at the value at which the
friction of the medium is equal to our thrust. Incidentally, we can't
hold it too long. We're running a temperature, which shows that we're
stepping along faster than anybody ever computed before. Also, it points
out the necessity for something that none of us ever anticipated needing
in an open-space drive--refrigerators or radiating wall-shields or
repellers or something of the sort. But to get back to our
velocity--taking Throckmorton's estimates it figures somewhere near the
order of magnitude of ten to the twenty-seventh. Fast enough, anyway, so
that you'd better bend an eye on that plate. Even after you see them you
won't know where they really are, because we don't know any of the
velocities involved--our own, theirs, or that of the beam--and we may be
right on top of them."

"Or, if we happen to be outrunning the beam, we won't see them at all.
That makes it nice piloting."

"How are you going to handle things when we get there?"

"Lock to them and take them aboard, if we're in time. If not, if they
are fighting already--_there they are_!"

The picture of the speedster's control room flashed upon the speaker.

"Hi, Fritz! Hi, Cleve! Welcome to our city! Where are you?"

"We don't know," Cleveland snapped back, "and we don't know where you
are, either. Can't figure anything without data. I see you're still
breathing air. Where are the Nevians? How much time have we got yet?"

"Not enough, I'm afraid. By the looks of things they will be within
range of us in a couple of hours, and you haven't even touched our
detector screen yet."

"A couple of _hours_!" In his relief Cleveland shouted the words.
"That's time to burn--we can be just about out of the Galaxy in
that...." He broke off at a yell from Rodebush.

"Broadcast, Spud, BROADCAST!" the physicist had cried, as Costigan's
image had disappeared utterly from his plate.

He cut off the _Boise's_ power, stopping her instantaneously in
mid-space, but the connection had been broken. Costigan could not
possibly have heard the orders to change his beam signal to a broadcast,
so that they could pick it up; nor would it have done any good if he had
heard and had obeyed. So immeasurably great had been their velocity that
they had flashed past the speedster and were now unknown thousands--or
millions--of miles beyond the fugitives they had come so far to he