I did not waste the minutes measured by that clock, grouped with our other instruments in the navigating room of the _Ertak_. I wrote hastily in the ship's log, stating the facts briefly and without feeling. If we came through, the log would read better thus; if not, and by some strange chance it came to human eyes, then the Universe would know at least that the _Ertak's_ officers did not flinch from even such a danger. * * * * * As I finished the entry, Correy spoke: "Kincaide's estimate was not far off, sir," he said, with a swift glance at the clock. "Here we go!" It was less than half a minute short of the ten estimated by Kincaide. I nodded and bent over the television disc--one of the huge, hooded affairs we used in those days. Widening the field to the greatest angle, and with low power, I inspected the space before us on all sides. The charts, operated by super-radio reflexes, had not lied about the danger into which we were passing--had passed. We were in the midst of a veritable swarm of meteorites of all sizes. They were not large; I believe the largest I saw had a mass of not more than three or four times that of the _Ertak_ herself. Some of the smaller bodies were only fifty or sixty feet in diameter. They were jagged and irregular in shape, and they seemed to spin at varying speeds, like tiny worlds. As I watched, fixing my view now on the space directly in our path, I saw that our disintegrator ray men were at work. Deep in the bowels of the _Ertak_, the moan of the ray generators had deepened in note; I could even feel the slight vibration beneath my feet. One of the meteorites slowly crumbled on top, the dust of disintegration hovering in a compact mass about the body. More and more of it melted away. The spinning motion grew irregular, eccentric, as the center of gravity was changed by the action of the ray. Another ray, two more, centered on the wobbling mass. It was directly in our path, looming up larger and larger every second. Faster and faster it melted, the rays eating into it from four sides. But it was perilously near now; I had to reduce power in order to keep all of it within the field of my disc. If-- The thing vanished before the very nose of the ship, not an instant too soon. I glanced up at the surface temperature indicator, and saw the big black hand move slowly for a degree or two, and stop. It was a very sensitive instrument, and registered even the slight friction of our passage through the disintegrated dust of the meteorite. * * * * * Our rays were working desperately, but disintegrator rays are not nearly so effective in space as in an atmosphere of some kind. Half a dozen times it seemed that we must crash head on into one of the flying bodies, but our speed was reduced now to such an extent that we were going but little faster than the meteorites, and this fact was all that saved us. We had more time for utilizing our rays.