"Something in the future." She laughed. "It's silly, isn't it, to be so frightened at a dream. Especially one so fantastic." "I don't know," Gavin replied dryly. "Mine didn't leave me so comfortable ... but you haven't told me what yours was." Nadia rubbed her temples. "I dreamed we were all captured on Jupiter and sent to the Penal Colony." She laughed at herself. "It's so silly, because you—you"—again she gave a low laugh—"you were a T.I.S. agent!" Gavin felt his mouth go dry. He stared at her in consternation. He moistened his lips and started to ask for more particulars, when the chief astrogator entered the messroom. The Nova's astrogator nodded perfunctorily at them and went across to the solar chart. Very deliberately, he pulled out the pin marking the Nova's position, moved it across the map to within a week's voyage of Jupiter. Gavin couldn't believe his eyes. "That's impossible! We weren't unconscious but a few seconds during the little death...." "An hour," Nadia corrected. "The effects last an hour. So Villanowski claims." "An hour, then. What difference does it make? The Nova couldn't have gone that distance in an hour, nor in a thousand hours! Why man, that's faster than the speed of light!" The chief astrogator grunted. "Impossible or not, that's our position. If you don't think so, go on out on the observation deck and take a look." Gavin leaped to his feet and plunged through the door. When he came out on the quartzite enclosed deck, he flung his gaze aloft. The entire aspect of the heavens had changed. The three streaks denoting the pursuing space craft were absent. The sun had diminished to the size of a lemon. And dead ahead loomed the huge banded disc of Jupiter. It was true. In the space of a few moments the Nova had traversed the void between Venus and Jupiter. Even though the planets were in a superior conjunction, the feat was unthinkable. No wonder the big corporations were fighting like wildcats to get hold of the Nova's spacedrive! Gavin dropped weakly in a deck chair, overawed by the possibilities. A new era of space travel was being inaugurated! VII Gavin Murdock was on watch below, when the Nova sliced into the upper strata of Jupiter's atmosphere. She dived in at a slant on the opposite side of the planet for Jovopolis and was quickly smothered from view by the thick translucent air. To the early astronomers, Jupiter had appeared enormous although it was only about a third denser than water. But the Huygen expedition in the first years of interplanetary travel had resolved the enigma. Jupiter consisted of a small solid core surrounded by an intensive and very dense atmosphere. The force of gravity at the surface was only between two and three times that on Terra.