The party descended to the ground floor and walked out to the ship. They filed into the airlock, and in the power room they looked in amazement at the tiny machines that ran the ship. The long black cylinder of the main power unit for the molecular drive looked weak and futile compared to the bulky machines that ran their own ships. The power storage coils, with their fields of intense, dead blackness, interested the Physicist immensely.

The ship was a constant source of wonder to them all. They investigated the laboratory and then went up to the second floor. Morey and Fuller greeted them at the door, and each of the four Earthmen took a group around the ship, explaining as they went.

The library was a point of great interest, exceeded only by the control room. Arcot found some difficulty in taking care of all his visitors; there were only four chairs in the control room. The Three could sit down, but Arcot needed the fourth chair to pilot the ship. The rest of the party had to hold on as best they could, which was not too difficult for men of such physical strength; they were accustomed to high accelerations in their elevators.

Morey, Wade, and Fuller strapped themselves into the seats at the ray projectors at the sides and stern.

Arcot wanted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the ship's armament first, and then the maneuverability. He picked a barren hillside for the first demonstration. It was a great rocky cliff, high above the timber line, towering almost vertically a thousand feet above them.

Then, at Arcot's order, the heat beams were all turned on the mountain at full power. In less than a minute, the peak began to melt, sending streamers of lava down the sides. The beams began to eat out a crater in the center, where the rock began to boil furiously under the terrific energy of the heat beams.

Then Arcot shut off the heat beams and turned on the molecular ray.

The molecules of the molten rock were traveling at high velocities—the heat was terrific. Arcot could see that the rock was boiling quite freely. When the molecular beam hit it, every one of those fast moving molecules shot upward together! With the roar of a meteor, it plunged toward space at five miles a second!

It had dropped to absolute zero when the beam hit it, but at that speed through the air, it didn't stay cold long! Arcot followed it up in the Ancient Mariner. It was going too slowly for him. The air had slowed it down and heated it up, so Arcot hit it with the molecular ray again, converting the heat back into velocity.

By the time they reached free space, Arcot had maneuvered the lump of rock into an orbit around the planet.

"Tharlano," he thought at the Astronomer, "your planet now has a new satellite!"

"So I perceive!" replied Tharlano. "Now that we are in space, can we use the instrument you told me of?"

He turned it to Sator. It filled the screen as they increased the power, but all they could see was billowing clouds. Another poor subject.

Morey showed Tharlano, the Astronomer, how to use the controls, and he began to sweep the sky with the instrument, greatly pleased with its resolving ability and tremendous magnification.

The Military Leader of the Three pointed out that the Satorians still had a weapon that was reported deadly, and they were in imminent danger unless Arcot's inventions were applied at once. All the way back to Nansal, they spent the time discussing the problem in the Ancient Mariner's Library.

It was finally agreed that the necessary plans and blueprints were to be given to the Nansalians, who could start production at once. The biggest problem was in the supply of lux and relux, which, because of their vast energy-content, required the atomic converters of the Ancient Mariner to make them. The Earthmen agreed to supply the power and the necessary materials to begin operations.

When the ship landed, a meeting of the manufacturers was called. Fuller distributed prints of the microfilmed plans for the equipment that he had packed in the library, and the factory engineers worked from them to build the necessary equipment.

The days that followed were busy days for Earthmen and Nansalians alike.

The Nansalians were fearful of the consequences of the weapon that the Satorians were rumored to have. The results of their investigations through their agents had, so far, resulted only in the death of the secret service men. All that was known was exactly what the Satorians wanted them to know; the instrument was new, and it was deadly.

On the other hand, the Satorians were not entirely in the dark as to the progress of Nansal, as Arcot and Morey discovered one day.

Tharlano had begun a systematic search of the known nebulae, comparing them with the photographs the Earthmen had given him, and looking for a galaxy with two satellite star clouds of exactly the right size and distance from the great spiral.

After months of work, he had finally picked one which filled the bill exactly! He invited Arcot and Morey to the observatory to confirm his findings.

The observatory was located on the barren peak of a great mountain more than nine miles high. It was almost the perfect place for an astronomical telescope. Here, well above the troposphere, the air was thin and always clear. The solid rock of the mountain was far from disturbing influences which might cause any vibration in the telescope.

The observatory was accessible only from a spaceship or air flyer, and, at that altitude, had to be pressurized and sealed against the thin, cold air outside. Within, the temperature was kept constant to a fraction of a degree to keep thermal expansion from throwing the mirror out of true.

Arcot and Morey, accompanied by Tharlano and Torlos, settled the Ancient Mariner to the landing field that had been blasted out of the rock of the towering mountain. They went over to the observatory and were at once admitted to the airlock.

The floor was of smoothed, solid rock, and in this, the great clock which timed and moved the telescope was set.

The entire observatory was, of course, surrounded by a magnetic shield, and it was necessary to make sure there were no enemy ships around before using the telescope, because the magnetic field affected the light rays passing through it.

There were half a dozen assistants with Tharlano at the observatory at all times, one of them in charge of the great file of plates that were kept on hand. Every plate made was printed in triplicate, to prevent their being destroyed in a raid. The original was kept at the observatory, and copies were sent to two of the largest cities on Nansal. It was from this file that Tharlano had gathered the data necessary to show Arcot his own galaxy.

Tharlano was proudly explaining the telescope to Arcot, realizing that the telectroscope was far better, but knowing that the Earthmen would appreciate this triumph of mechanical perfection. Arcot and Morey were both intensely interested in the discussion, while Torlos, slightly bored by a subject he knew next to nothing about, was examining the rest of the observatory.

Suddenly, he cried out in warning, and leaped a full thirty feet over the rock floor to gather Arcot and Morey in his great arms. There was a sharp, distinct snap of a pneumatic pistol, and the thud of a bullet. Arcot and Morey each felt Torlos jerk!

Quick as a flash, Torlos pushed the two men behind the great tube of the telescope. He leaped over it and across the room, and disappeared into the supply room. There was the noise of a scuffle, another crack from a pneumatic pistol, and the sudden crash and tinkle of broken glass.

Suddenly, the figure of a man described a wide arc as it flew out of the supply room and landed with a heavy crash on the floor. Instantly, Torlos leaped at him. There was a trickle of blood from his left shoulder, but he gripped the man in his giant arms, pinning him to the floor. The struggle was brief. Torlos simply squeezed the man's chest in his arms. There was the faint creak of metal, and the man's chest began to bend! In a moment, he was unconscious.

"This is one Satorian spy that won't report. I could have finished him when I got my hold on him, but I wanted to take him before the Council for questioning. He'll be all right; I just dented his chest a little."

"We owe our lives to you again, Torlos," Arcot told him gravely. "But you certainly risked your life; the bullet might well have penetrated your heart instead of striking a rib, as it seems to have done."

"Rib? What is a rib?" The thought concept seemed totally unfamiliar to Torlos.

Arcot looked at him oddly, then reached out and ran an exploratory hand over Torlos' chest. It was smooth and solid!

"Morey!" Arcot exclaimed. "These men have no ribs! Their chest is as solid as their skulls!"

"Then how do they breathe?" Morey asked.

"How do you breathe? I mean most of the time. You use your diaphragm and your abdominal muscles. These people do, too!"

Morey grinned. "No wonder Torlos jumped in front of that bullet! He didn't have as much to fear as we do—he had a built-in bullet proof vest! You'd have to shoot him in the abdomen to reach any vital organ."

Arcot turned back to Torlos. "Who is this man?"

"Undoubtedly a Satorian spy sent to murder you Earthmen. I saw the muzzle of his pistol as he was aiming and jumped in the way of the bullet. There is not much damage done."

"We'd better get back to the city," Arcot said. "Fuller and Wade might be in danger!"

They bundled the Satorian spy into the ship, where Morey tied him further with thin strands of lux cable no bigger than a piece of string.

Torlos looked amused and pulled. His smile vanished. He pulled harder. His huge muscles bulged and writhed in great ridges along his arms. The thin cord remained complacently undamaged. Torlos relaxed and grinned sheepishly.

"You win," he thought. "I'll make no more comments on the things I see you do."

They returned to the capital at once. Arcot shoved the speed up as high as he dared, for Torlos felt there might be some significance in the attempt to remove Arcot and Morey. Wade and Fuller had already been warned by radio, and had immediately retired to the Council Room of the Three. The members of the Investigation Board joined them to question the prisoner upon his arrival.

When they arrived, Arcot and Morey went in with Torlos, who was carrying the struggling, shackled spy over his shoulder.

The Earthmen watched while the expert interrogators of the Investigation Board questioned the prisoner. The philosophy of Norus did not permit torture, even for a vicious enemy, but the questioners were shrewd and ingenious in their methods. For hours, they took turns pounding questions at the prisoner, cajoling, threatening, and arguing.

They got nowhere. Solidly, the prisoner stuck by his guns. Why had he tried to shoot the Earthmen? He didn't know. What were his orders from Sator? Silence. What were Sator's plans? Silence. Did he know anything of the new weapon? A shrug of the shoulders.

Finally, Arcot spoke to the Chief Investigation Officer. "May I try my luck? I think I'm powerful enough to use a little combination of hypnosis and telepathy that will get the information out of him." The Investigator agreed to try it.

For a full quarter of an hour, the two men, Earthmen and Satorian, stood locked in a frozen tableau, staring into each other's eyes. The onlookers waited in watchful silence.

Finally, Arcot turned and shook his head, as if to clear it. As he did so, the spy slumped forward in his chair, unconscious.

Arcot rubbed his own temples and spoke in English to Morey. "Some job! You'll have to tell them what I found out; my head is splitting! With a headache like this, I can't communicate.

"Torlos was right; they were trying to get rid of all four of us. We're the only ones who can operate the ship, and that ship is the only defense against them.

"He knows several other spies here in the city, and we can, I think, practically wipe out the Satorian spy system all over the planet with the information he gave me and what we can get from others we arrest.

"Unfortunately, he doesn't know anything about the new weapon; the higher-ups aren't telling anyone, not even their own men. I get the idea that only those on board the ships using it will know about it before the attack.

"An attack is planned, and very soon. He didn't know when. We can only lie in readiness and do everything we can to help these people with their work."

While Morey relayed this information to the Investigating Board and the Council, Wade was talking in low tones to Arcot.

"They had a lot of workmen bring twenty tons of lead wire on board this evening, and the distilled water tanks are full. The tanks are full of oxygen, and they gave us some synthetic food which we can eat.

"They took a slice of flesh from my arm and analyzed it down to the last detail. From that, they were able to predict what sort of food we would need to eat. They can actually synthesize living things!

"I've tried the food they made, and it has a very good flavor. They guaranteed it would have all the necessary ingredients, right down to the smallest trace element!

"We're fully stocked for a long trip. The Three said it was their first consideration that we should be able to return to our homes."

"How about their armament?" Arcot asked. He was holding his head in his hands to ease the throbbing ache within it.

"Each city has a projector supplied by the regular power station on top of their central building. The molecular ray, of course; they still don't have enough power to run a heat beam.

"We didn't have time to make more than one for each city, but this one will give the Satorians a nasty time if they come near it. It works nicely through the magnetic screen, so it won't be necessary for them to lower the barrier to shoot."

Morey had finished telling the Council what Arcot had discovered from the prisoner, and the Councilmen were leaving one by one to go to their duties in preparing for the attack.

"I think we had best go back to the Ancient Mariner," Arcot said. "I need an aspirin and some sleep."

"Same here," agreed Fuller. "These men make me feel as though I were lazy. They work for forty or fifty hours and think nothing of it. Then they snooze for five hours and they're ready for another long stretch. I feel like a lounge lizard if I take six hours out of every twenty-four."

It was seven hours after they had gone to sleep that it came.

Through the ship came the low hum that rose quickly to a screeching call of danger—the warning! The city was under attack!

The Nansalian fleet was already outside the city and hard at it. The fight was on! But Arcot saw that the fight was one-sided in the extreme. Ship after ship of the Nansalian fleet seemed to burst into sudden, inexplicable flame and fall blazing against another of their own ships! It seemed as though some irresistible attraction drew the ships together and smashed them against each other in a blaze of electric flame, while the ships of Sator did nothing but stay far off to one side and dodge the rays of the Nansalian ships.

Quickly, Arcot turned to Torlos. "Torlos, go out! Leave the ship! We can work better when you aren't here, since we don't have to worry about exposure to magnetic rays. I don't like to make you miss this, but it's for your world!"

Torlos showed his disappointment; he wanted to be in this battle. But he realized that what the Earthman said was true. Their weak, stone bones were completely immune to the effects of even the most powerful magnetic ray.

He nodded. "I'll go. Good Luck! And give them a few shots for me!"

He turned and ran down the corridor to the airlock. As soon as he was outside, Arcot lifted the ship.

"They've got something, all right," Arcot thought to himself as he drove the Ancient Mariner into battle.

It would be impossible for the Nansalians to lower their magnetic screen, even for a second, so Arcot simply aimed the ship toward it and turned on the power.

"Hold on!" he called as they struck it. The ship reeled and sank suddenly planetward, then it bounced up and outward. They were through the wall.

The rooms were suddenly oppressively hot, and the molecular cooler was struggling to lower it. "We made it," Morey said triumphantly, "but the eddy currents sure heated up the hull!"

They were out of the city now, speeding toward the battle. Following a prearranged system, the Nansalian ships retreated, leaving the Earthmen a free hand. They needed no help!

Wade, Fuller, and Morey began to lash out with the molecular beams, smashing the Satorian ships in on themselves, crushing them to the ground, where they exploded in violet flame.

Wade and Fuller began to work together. Wade caught one ship in the molecular ray, and Fuller hit with a heat beam. Like some titanic broom they swept it around at dozens of miles a second, leaping, twisting, smashing ship after ship. Like a snowball, the lump of glowing metal grew with each crash, till a dozen ships had fallen into it. It was a new broom, and it swept clean!

Then a magnetic beam caught the Ancient Mariner. With a shock, it slowed down at a terrific rate. Then Arcot turned on more power, and simply dragged the other ship along by its own magnetic beam! Wade tore the ship loose with his molecular beam, but the mighty mass of metal that had been his broom was gone, a glowing mass of metal on the ground.

"Can't find us!" Arcot replied into the intercom. The sun was setting, and the blazing red star was lighting the ship, making it seem like a ball of fire when still and a flashing streak of red light when in motion.

Ship after ship of the Satorians was going down before the three beams of the Earth ship; the great fleet was dissolving like a lump of sugar in boiling water.

Suddenly, just ahead of them, an enemy ship drove toward them with obvious intent to ram; if his magnetic beam caught them, and drew them towards him, there would be a head-on collision.

Wade caught it with a molecular beam, and it became a blazing wreck on the ground.

"All rays off!" Arcot called. As soon as they were off, Arcot hit a switch, and the Ancient Mariner vanished.

Arcot drove the invisible ship high above the battle. Below, the Satorians were searching wildly for the ship. They knew it must be somewhere near, and feared that at any second it might materialize before them with its deadly rays.

Arcot stayed above them for nearly a minute while the ships below twisted and turned, wildly seeking him. Then they went into formation again and started back for the city.

"That's what I wanted!" Arcot said grimly. "In formation, they're like sitting ducks!" He dropped the ship like a plummet while the ray operators prepared to sweep the formation with their beams.

Suddenly the Ancient Mariner was visible again. Simultaneously, three rays leaped down and bathed the formation in their pale radiance. The front ranks vanished, and the line broke, attacking the ship that hung above them now. Four magnetic beams hit the Ancient Mariner at once! Arcot couldn't pull away from all four, and his gunners couldn't tell which ships were holding them.

All at once, the men felt a violent electrical shock! The air about them was filled with the blue haze of the electric weapon they had seen!

Arcot accelerated away from it as Fuller hit it with a molecular beam. The ship reeled and stopped, and the Ancient Mariner pulled away from it rapidly. Then, the frost-covered ship of the dead came on, still heading for them!

Arcot turned and went off to the right, but like a pursuing Nemesis, the strange ship came after them in the shortest, most direct route!

The molecular beams were useless now; there was no molecular energy left in the frozen hulk that accelerated toward them. Suddenly, the two envelopes of blue light touched and coalesced! A great, blinding arc leaped between the two ships as the speeding Satorian hull smashed violently against the side of the Ancient Mariner! The men ducked automatically, and were hurled against their seat-straps with tremendous force. There was a rending, crashing roar, a sea of flame—and darkness.

They could only have been unconscious a few seconds, for when the fog went away, they could see the glowing mass of the enemy ship still falling far beneath them. The lux wall where it had hit was still glowing red.

"Morey!" Arcot called. "You all right? Wade? Fuller?"

"Okay!" Morey answered.

So were Wade and Fuller.

"It was the lux hull that saved us," Arcot said. "It wouldn't break, and the temperature of the arc didn't bother it. And since it wouldn't carry a current, we didn't get the full electrical effect.

"I'm going to convince those birds that this ship is made of something they can't touch! We'll give them a real show!"

He dived downward, back into the battle.

And even that was of little use, for they simply lost one of their own ships without harming the Ancient Mariner in the least.

Ship after ship crumpled in on itself like crushed tinfoil or hurled itself violently to the ground as the molecular beams touched them. The Satorian fleet was a fleet no longer; it was a small collection of disorganized ships whose commanders had only one thought—to flee!

The few ships that were left spearheaded out into space, using every bit of acceleration that the tough bodies of the Satorians could stand. With a good head start, they were rapidly escaping.

"We can't equal that acceleration," said Wade. "We'll lose them!"

"Nope!" Arcot said grimly. "I want a couple of those ships, and I'm going to get them!"

At four gravities of acceleration, the Ancient Mariner drove after the fleeing ships of Sator, but the enemy ships soon dropped rapidly from sight.

Twenty five thousand miles out in space, Arcot cut the acceleration. "We'll catch them now, I think," he said softly. He pushed the little red switch for an instant, then opened it. A moment before, the planet Nansal had been a huge disc behind them. Now it was a tiny thing, a full million miles away.

It took the Satorian fleet over an hour to reach them. They appeared as dim lights in the telectroscope. They rapidly became larger. Arcot had extinguished the lights, and since they were on the sunward side of the approaching ships, the Ancient Mariner was effectively invisible.

"They're going to pass us at a pretty good clip," Morey said quietly. "They've been accelerating all this time."

Arcot nodded in agreement. "We'll have to hit them as they come toward us. We'd never get one in passing."

As the ships grew rapidly in the plate, Arcot gave the order to fire!

Then, in panic, they scattered all over space, fleeing madly from the impossible ship that was firing on them. They knew they had left it behind, yet here it was, waiting for them!

"Let them go," Arcot said. "We've got our specimens, and the rest can carry the word back to Sator that the war is over for them."

It was several hours later that the Ancient Mariner approached Nansal again, bringing with it two Satorian ships. By careful use of the heat beam and the molecular beam, the Earthmen had managed to jockey the two battle cruisers back to Nansal.

It was nighttime when they landed. The whole area around the city was illuminated by giant searchlights. Men were working recovering the bodies of the dead, aiding those who had survived, and examining the wreckage.

Arcot settled the two Satorian ships to the ground, and landed the Ancient Mariner.

Torlos sprinted over the ground toward them as he saw the great silver ship land. He had been helping in the examination of the wrecked enemy ships.

"Have they attacked anywhere else on the planet?" Arcot asked as he opened the airlock.

Torlos nodded. "They hit five other cities, but they didn't use as big a fleet as they did here. The plan of battle seems to have been for the ships with the new weapons to hit here first and then hit each of the other cities in turn. They didn't have enough to make a full-scale attack; evidently, your presence here made them desperate.

"At any rate, the other cities were able to beat off the magnetic beam ships with the projectors of molecular beams."

"Good," Arcot thought. "Then the Nansal-Sator war is practically over!"

Richard Arcot stepped into the open airlock of the Ancient Mariner and walked down the corridor to the library. There, he found Fuller and Wade battling silently over a game of chess and Morey relaxed in a chair with a book in his hands.

"What a bunch of loafers," Arcot said acidly. "Don't you ever do anything?"

"Sure," said Fuller. "The three of us have entered into a lifelong pact with each other to refrain from using a certain weapon which would make this war impossible for all time."

"What war?" Arcot wondered. "And what weapon?"

"This war," Wade grinned, pointing at the chess board. "We have agreed absolutely never to read each other's minds while playing chess."

Morey lowered his book and looked at Arcot. "And just what have you been so busy about?"

"I've been investigating the weapon on board the Satorian ships we captured," Arcot told them. "Quite an interesting effect. The Nansalian scientists and I have been analyzing the equipment for the past three days.

"The Satorians found a way to cut off and direct an electrostatic field. The energy required was tremendous, but they evidently separated the charges on Sator and carried them along on the ships.

"They located the negative charges on one ship and the positive charges on the one next to it. Their mutual attraction pulled them toward each other. As they got closer, the charges arced across, heating and fusing the two ships. But they still had enough motion toward each other to crash.

"They were wrecked by less than a tenth of an ounce of ions which were projected to the ship and held there by an automatic field until the ships got close enough to arc through it.

"We still haven't been able to analyze that trick field, though."

"Well, now that we've gotten things straightened out," Fuller said, "let's go home! I'm anxious to leave! We're all ready to go, aren't we?"

Arcot nodded. "All except for one thing. The Supreme Three want to see us. We've got a meeting with them in an hour, so put on your best Sunday pants."

In the Council of Three, Arcot was officially invited to remain with them. The fleet of molecular motion ships was nearing completion—the first one was to roll off the assembly line the next day—but they wanted Arcot, Wade, Morey, and Fuller to remain on Nansal.

There were characters in Nansalese at each point of the tetrahedron, and other characters engraved in a circle around it.

Arcot turned it in his hand. On the back was a representation of the Nansalian planetary system. The center was a pale yellow, highly-faceted stone which represented the sun. Around this were the orbits of planets, and each of the eleven planets was marked by a different colored stone.

The Scientist was holding in the palm of his hand another such disc, slightly smaller. On it, there were three green stones, one slightly larger than the others.

"This is my badge of office as Scientist of the Three. The stone marked Science is here larger. Your plaque is new. Henceforth, it shall be the Three and a Coordinator!

"Your vote shall outweigh all but a unanimous vote of the Three. To you, this world is answerable, for you have saved our civilization. And when you return, as you have promised, you shall be Coordinator of this system!"

Arcot stood silent for a moment. This was a thing he had never thought of. He was a scientist, and he knew that his ability was limited to that field.

At last, he smiled and replied: "It is a great honor, and it is a great work. But I can not spend my time here always; I must return to my own planet. I can not be fairly in contact with you.

"Therefore, I will make my first move in office now, and suggest that this plaque signify, not the Coordinator, and first power of your country, but Counselor and first friend in all things in which I can serve you.

"The tetrahedron you have chosen; so let it be. The apex is out of the plane of the other points, and I am out of this galaxy. But there is a relationship between the apex and the points of the base, and these lines will exist forever.

"I will accept this plaque with the understanding that I am but your friend and advisor. Too much power in the hands of one man is bad. Even though you trust me completely, there might be an unscrupulous successor.

"And I must return to my world.

"Your first ship will be ready tomorrow, and when it is completed, my friends and I will leave your planet.

"We will return, though. We are ten million light years apart, but the universe is not to be measured in space anymore, but in time. We are five days apart. I will be nearer to you at all times than is Sator!

"If you wish, others of my race shall come, too. But if you do not want them to come, they will not. I alone have Tharlano's photographs of the route, and I can lose them."

For a moment, the Three spoke together, then the Scientist was again thinking at Arcot.

"Perhaps you are right. It is obvious your people know more than we. They have the molecular ray, and they know no wars; they do not destroy each other. They must be a good race, and we have seen excellent examples in you.

"We can realize your desire to return home, but we ask you to come again. We will remember that you are not ten million light years, but five days, from our planet."

When the conference was ended, Arcot and his friends returned to their ship. Torlos was waiting for them outside the airlock.

"Abaout haow saon you laive?" he asked in English.

"Why—tomorrow," Arcot said, in surprise. "Have you been practicing our language?"

Arcot was amazed that he should ask. It was an idea he would very much like to see fulfilled. The idea of metal-boned men with tremendous strength and strange molecular-motion muscles would inspire no friendship, no feeling of kinship, in the people of Earth. But the man himself—a pleasant, kindly, sincere, intelligent giant—would be a far greater argument for the world of Nansal that the most vivid orator would ever be.

Arcot asked the others, and the vote was unanimous—let him come!

The next day, amid great ceremony, the first of the new Nansalian ships came from the factories. When the celebration was over, the four Earthmen and the giant Torlos entered the Ancient Mariner.

"Ready to go, Torlos?" Arcot grinned.

"Pearfactly, Ahcut. Tse soonah tse bettah!" he said in his oddly accented English.

Five hours saw them out of the galaxy. Twelve hours more, and they were heading for home at full speed, well out in space.

The Home Galaxy was looming large when they next stopped for observation. Old Tharlano had guided them correctly!

They were going home!

G-547 (50¢) THE BLIND SPOT
by Austin Hall and H. E. Flint

F-318 (40¢) THE SPOT OF LIFE
by Austin Hall

F-319 (40¢) CRASHING SUNS
by Edmond Hamilton

F-327 (40¢) THE DARK WORLD
by Henry Kuttner

F-343 (40¢) THE EXILE OF TIME
by Ray Cummings

F-344 (40¢) THE WELL OF THE WORLDS
by Henry Kuttner

F-345 (40¢) THE LORD OF DEATH
by Homer Eon Flint

F-346 (40¢) THE BLACK STAR PASSES
by John W. Campbell

F-355 (40¢) THE DEVOLUTIONIST
by Homer Eon Flint

F-356 (40¢) THE TIME AXIS
by Henry Kuttner

F-363 (40¢) TAMA OF THE LIGHT COUNTRY
by Ray Cummings

F-364 (40¢) THE MIGHTIEST MACHINE
by John W. Campbell

M-132 (45¢) THE KING IN YELLOW
by Robert W. Chambers

F-372 (40¢) SPACEHOUNDS OF IPC
by Edward E. Smith

F-375 (40¢) THE WORLDS OF ROBERT A. HEINLEIN

M-142 (45¢) DOPPELGANGERS by H. F. Heard



Available from Ace Books, Inc. (Dept. MM), 1120 Avenue of the Americas, New York, N.Y. 10036. Send price indicated, plus 5¢ handling fee.

ISLANDS
OF
SPACE

"John Campbell's book was written as a sequel to The Black Star Passes ... and believe me, it was a world-beater in those days.

"Arcot, Wade, Morey, and their computer, Fuller, put together a ship which will travel faster than light ... they give us what may have been the first space-warp drive. The concept was simple; to make it plausible wasn't—unless you were John Campbell.

"With this out-of-space drive they hightail it among the stars. They locate the fugitive planets of the Black Star ... find a frozen cemetery-world of a lost race ... then head out for another galaxy ... and wind up in a knock-down-drag-out interplanetary war in the other galaxy."

—P. Schuyler Miller, Astounding Science Fiction

Transcriber notes:

page 006 - Corrected spelling of millenia to millennia
page 007 - Corrected intergraph to integraph to be consistent w/ other instance - 1st paragraph (Google shows intergraph to be a company and integraph to be a calculator)
page 009 - Added a single ' that was dropped in the 3rd paragragh before ... brilliant mathematical assistant
page 013 - Corrected spelling of whench to whence
page 027 - Corrected spelling of withing to within, 6th paragraph
page 028 - Missing word - replaced "energy the strain" with "energy in the strain" - 6th paragraph
page 029 - Corrected spelling of Flourine to Fluorine
page 030 - Italicized "Ancient Mariner" on the first line of Ch. IV to be consistent with the dozens of other instances
page 032 - Corrected spelling of flourine to fluorine - 2nd paragraph
page 032 - Corrected spelling of flurocarbon to fluorocarbon - 2nd paragraph
page 037 - Corrected typo of 'that that' to 'than that' - 6th paragraph
page 052 - Corrected spelling of paralax to parallax - 5nd paragraph
page 059 - Corrected spelling of millenia to millennia - 3rd paragraph
page 074 - Corrected typo of 'ro' to 'to' in 1st line of 8th paragraph
page 085 - Corrected spelling of airly to airily
page 098 - Corrected typo of 'as' to 'was' - 1st line of the 7 paragraph
page 116 - Corrected typo of turned to turn - paragraph 10
page 117 - Corrected typo of builder to boulder - paragraph 6
page 118 - Corrected typo of seen to seem - paragraph 7
page 119 - Corrected typo of 'a known' to 'an unknown' - last paragraph
page 126 - Corrected typo of Earthmen to Earthman - paragraph 3
page 142 - Corrected typo of might to mighty - paragraph 7
page 143 - Corrected typo of opporutnity to opportunity - paragraph 6
page 145 - Corrected typo of mightest to mightiest - first paragraph
page 152 - Corrected typo of parelying to parleying - last paragraph
page 155 - Corrected typo of eloguently to eloquently - 3rd paragraph
page 161 - Corrected typo of could to would - 7th paragraph
page 164 - Corrected typo of communicaton to communication - paragraph 6
page 173 - Corrected typo of Astonomer to Astronomer - paragraph 7
Project Gutenberg couldn't find a renewal of the copyright.