a pale violet disc in front of them ballooned out
of nowhere and slid off to one side.

The spaceship reeled, perking the men around in the control seats. Heavy
safety relays thudded dully; the instruments flickered under a suddenly
rising surge of power--then they were calm again. Arcot had snapped over
the power switch.

"That," he said quietly, "is not so good."

"Threw the gyroscopes, didn't it?" asked Morey, his voice equally as
quiet.

"It did--and I have no idea how far. We're off course and we don't know
which direction we're headed."

VI

"What's the matter?" asked Fuller anxiously.

Arcot pointed out the window at a red star that blazed in the distance.
"We got too near the field of gravity of that young giant and he threw
us for a loss. We drained out three-fourths of the energy from our coils
and lost our bearings in the bargain. The attraction turned the
gyroscopes and threw the ship out of line, so we no longer know where
the sun is.

"Well, come on, Morey; all we can do is start a search. At this
distance, we'd best go by Sirius; it's brighter and nearer." He looked
at the instrument panel. "I was using the next lowest power and I still
couldn't avoid that monster. This ship is just a little _too_ hot to
handle."

Their position was anything but pleasant. They must pick out from the
vast star field behind them the one star that was home, not knowing
exactly where it was. But they had one tremendous help--the photographs
of the star field around Sol that they had taken at the last stop. All
they had to do was search for an area that matched their photographs.

They found the sun at last, after they had spotted Sirius, but they had
had to rotate the ship through nearly twenty-five degrees to do it.
After establishing their bearings, they took new photographs for their
files.

Meanwhile, Wade had been recharging the coils. When he was finished, he
reported the fact to Arcot.

"Fine," Arcot said. "And from now on, I'm going to use the least
possible amount of power. It certainly isn't safe to use more."

They started for the control room, much relieved. Arcot dived first,
with Wade directly behind him. Wade decided suddenly to go into his room
and stopped himself by grabbing a handhold. Morey, following close
behind, bumped into him and was brought to rest, while Wade was pushed
into his room.

But Fuller, coming last, slammed into Morey, who moved forward with new
velocity toward