ugged his shoulders.

"I had a hunch," he remarked with a grin. "They didn't wait for us a
second. 'I don't care for some,' says they, 'I've already had any.'
They're running in a straight line, with full power on, and don't intend
to stop or slow down."

"How do you know?" asked Dorothy. "By the distance? How far away are
they?"

"I know, Red-Top, by what I didn't find out with that screen I just put
out. It didn't reach them, and it went so far that the distance is
absolutely meaningless, even expressed in parsecs. Well, a stern chase
is proverbially a long chase, and I guess this one isn't going to be any
exception."

* * * * *

Every eight hours Seaton launched his all-embracing ultra-detector, but
day after day passed and the instruments remained motionless after each
cast of that gigantic net. For several days the Galaxy behind them had
been dwindling from a mass of stars down to a huge bright lens; down to
a small, faint lens; down to a faintly luminous patch. At the previous
cast of the detector it had still been visible as a barely-perceptible
point of light in the highest telescopic power of the visiplate. Now, as
Dorothy and Seaton, alone in the control room, stared into that
visiplate, everything was blank and black; sheer, indescribable
blackness; the utter and absolute absence of everything visible or
tangible.

"This is awful, Dick.... It's just too darn horrible. It simply scares
me pea-green!" she shuddered as she drew herself to him, and he swept
both his mighty arms around her in a soul-satisfying embrace.

"'Sall right, darling. That stuff out there'd scare anybody--I'm scared
purple myself. It isn't in any finite mind to understand anything
infinite or absolute. There's one redeeming feature, though,
cuddle-pup--we're together."

"You chirped it, lover!" Dorothy returned his caresses with all her
old-time fervor and enthusiasm. "I feel lots better now. If it gets to
you that way, too, I know it's perfectly normal--I was beginning to
think maybe I was yellow or something ... but maybe you're kidding me?"
she held him off at arm's length, looking deep into his eyes: then,
reassured, went back-into his arms. "Nope, you feel it, too," and her
glorious auburn head found its natural resting-place in the curve of his
mighty shoulder.

"Yellow!... You?" Seaton pressed his wife closer still! and laughed
aloud. "Maybe--but so is picric acid; so is nitroglycerin; and