us in the vast immensity of intergalactic
space."

It wasn't a pleasant idea to contemplate. Each of the suits had a radio
for communication with each other and with the ship, but they would only
carry a few hundred miles. A mere step in space!

Wade shook his head, grinning. "I have no desire to be left all by
myself on this ship, thank you. You don't need to worry."

A few minutes later, Arcot, Morey, and Fuller stepped out of the airlock
and set to work, using power flashlights to examine the outer hull for
any signs of possible strain.

The flashlights, equipped as they were with storage coils for power,
were actually powerful searchlights, but in the airlessness of space,
the rays were absolutely invisible. They could only be seen when they
hit the relux inner wall at such an angle that they were reflected
directly into the observer's eyes. The lux metal wall, being
transparent, was naturally invisible, and the smooth relux, reflecting
one hundred percent of the incident light, did not become illuminated,
for illumination is the result of the scattering of light.

It was necessary to look closely and pass the beams over every square
inch of the surface. However, a crack would be rough, and hence would
scatter light and be even more readily visible than otherwise.

To their great relief, after an hour and a half of careful inspection,
none of them had found any signs of a crack, and they went back into the
ship to resume the voyage.

Again they hurled through space, the twin ghost ships following them
closely. Hour after hour the ship went on. Now they had something else
to do. They were at work calculating some problems that Arcot had
suggested in connection with the velocities of motion that had been
observed in the stars at the edge of the island universe they were
approaching. Since these stars revolved about the mass of the entire
galaxy, it was possible to calculate the mass of the entire universe by
averaging the values from several stars. Their results were not exact,
but they were reliable enough. They found the universe to have a mass of
two hundred and fifty million suns, only a little less than the home
Galaxy. It was an average-sized nebula.

Still the hours dragged as they came gradually nearer their
goal--gradually, despite their speed of twenty-four light years per
second!

At the end of the second day after their trouble with the cosmic ray
field, they stopped for observation. They were