BEYOND THE X ECLIPTIC By FOX B. HOLDEN _Earthman was dying of boredom; Hope had become folly. Work merely a means to avoid insanity. And death was the great reward ... until Cragin, step-son of darkest space, dared the Barrier; dared to soar beyond the X Ecliptic--to the machine-planet--where The Owners grimly governed all the fading galaxies._ [Transcriber's Note: This etext was produced from Planet Stories November 1953. Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed.] Earth's eyes still blinked in the bright sunlight in which they suddenly gloried again; Earth's throats, no longer fevered and parched, still wondered at the cool feel of fresh water, which had not trickled down them for more than five centuries. Earth's minds were still ignorant of the answer; they knew only that this was Life, although they had failed by themselves in cheating Death, and had already calculated the dimensions for their graves. The small calendar on the podium said Sunday, June 9, 3024. Cragin placed a small black notebook beside it. Neither his carriage nor mien were those of the gaunt-faced, tall-browed men of science who sat, ill-at-ease, mute, in the broadly-aisled tiers of the echo-whispering auditorium. For Cragin was not one of them. He was young-old, something of slate and steel; gray, something almost of legend and of the mystery of Deep Space itself. He had the quiet voice of all men who had lived their lives within arm's length of the Barrier. "Gentlemen," he began, "I doubt if I have many of the scientific answers you want. In calculated, scientific terms, I am not able to tell you why there is water once more in the river beds, clean air to breathe again, snow once more in winter and rain again in springtime. I know little more than the simple facts that the grass is once more green; that the hell-deserts have vanished. I have come here with few heretofore unknown scientific phenomena which I know you seek to explain the rekindling of the Sun and the replacement of Earth in its old path around it. "The President told me that all I say is to be recorded so that you can pick it apart with the proverbial fine-tooth comb when I'm finished to see if I've dropped some new hint on which you can go to work. He told me personally that I'm your last hope for a solution to the riddle of the Change, because I'm the only living man who ever took a ship further than a light-year beyond the Barrier; because I've flown more parsecs of Deep Space than anybody else; because I know more about what's out there, and what is not, than you do.