red stars.

"But we're here to decide which way to go," he added with a sudden
briskness as he straightened his shoulders. "Every now and then, I get a
new idea and I--I sort of dream. That's when I'm most likely to see the
solution. I think I know the solution now, but unless the need arises,
I'm never going to use it. It's too dangerous a toy."

There was silence for a moment, then Morey said, quietly:

"I've got a course plotted for us. We'll leave this Galaxy at a steep
angle--about forty-five degrees from the Galactic plane--to give us a
good view of our own Galaxy. And we can head for one of the nebulae in
that general area. What do you say?"

"I say," remarked Fuller, "that some of the great void without seems to
have leaked into my own poor self. It's been thirty thousand years since
I am going to have a meal this morning--whatever it is I mean--and I
want another." He looked meaningfully at Wade, the official cook of the
expedition.

Arcot suddenly burst out laughing. "So that's what I've been wanting!"
It had been ten chronometer hours since they had eaten, but since they
had been outracing light, they were now thirty thousand years in Earth's
past.

The weightlessness of free fall makes it difficult to recognize normally
familiar sensations, and the feeling of hunger is one of them. There was
little enough work to be done, so there was no great need for
nourishment, but the ordinary sensation of hunger is not caused by lack
of nourishment, but an empty stomach.

Sleep was another problem. A restless body will not permit a tired brain
to sleep, and though they had done a great deal of hard mental work, the
lack of physical fatigue made sleep difficult. The usual "day" in space
was forty hours, with thirty-hour waking periods and ten hours of sleep.

"Let's eat, then," Arcot decided. "Afterwards, we'll take a few
photographs and then throw this ship into high and really make time."

* * * * *

Two hours later, they were again seated at the control board. Arcot
reached out and threw the red switch. "I'm going to give her half power
for ten seconds." The air about them seemed suddenly snapping with
unprecedented power--then it was gone as the coil became fully charged.

"Lucky we shielded those relays," Arcot muttered. The tremendous surge
of current set up a magnetic field that turned knives and forks and, as
Wade found to his intense disgust, stopped watches that were