Nevertheless, to give up my commission, as youngest commander of the great 40 N, to disappear, lose all I had earned, gave me pause. To return, perhaps never. Wanderers beyond the stars! Was this not, perhaps, too bold a thing for human endeavor? I heard my voice saying quietly, “Why, of course I’m going with you, Dr. Weatherby.” I was aware that Alice had come in to sit beside me, her cool white hand impulsively pressing mine. And Dolores was saying, “Alice, they’re going! Isn’t that wonderful? We’re all going, just as soon as we can get ready!” * * * * * “A strange simplicity,” Dr. Weatherby was saying. “First, let me make this clear: when I say universe—the construction of our universe—I mean everything that exists, or has, or will exist, the smallest entity of our infinitesimal atomic world to the greatest conception of what may lie beyond the stars. Does that sound complicated? Let me say again, it is simple.” He leaned toward us, with his thick, strong hands gripped in his lap. “I want you to realize first that we are dealing with infinities. The human mind is so finite, so limited. You must cast off most of your instinctive methods of reasoning. You understand me?” “We’ll try,” I said. He nodded and went on. “Conceive a void of nothingness. No space, no time, no material bodies. Just nothing. That was the beginning. Do not try to wonder _when_ it was. A billion years ago . . . a billion billion. Not at all. You must not think of when, because _when_ implies time. There was no _time_. There could be no time without material bodies to create movement and events. For time in itself is nothing but the measurement between events. “We have then, a nothingness. A vortex. A whirlpool.” “A vortex of nothingness?” I exclaimed. “Exactly. Why, back in the 1920’s, Leonard, scientists recognized that the basic entities of matter were only whirlpools. They hoped then to find some fundamental substance, like ether. But there is none. “A whirlpool, by its very motion, simulates substance. And, in the last analysis, that is all which exists—an apparent solidity. Divide anything, probe into anything, you find only a _motion_ of something else smaller which is apparently real. But then take that smaller thing. Divide it. You find more empty spaces, more nothingness. And other yet smaller things in violent motion. “Why, Leonard, don’t you realize that’s what puzzled scientists? From 1900 on, they puzzled over it. They found a solid bar of iron to be composed of molecules. They said: ‘Oh yes, we understand. This solidity of iron is only apparent. It really consists of molecules of iron with empty spaces in between them, and the molecules are in motion.’ “But then, Leonard—this was way back—they suddenly found that the reality of the molecule was only apparent. It was just like the iron! Empty spaces, with atoms in motion. Ah, at last they had got to the bottom of it. Atoms.