"Why did the Chief have to pick on us?" Jhul Din exclaimed. "Look how long it'll take us to go outside the galaxy far enough to meet those dark stars." "Well, it can't be helped," I said as we entered the cruiser. "The sooner you quit complaining and we get started, the sooner we'll be back." He left us, still grumbling, and I heard his deep voice calling the crew to their posts as Korus Kan and I climbed to the cruiser's bridge-room. "Is everything in order for a start?" I asked Korus Kan and he saluted. "Everything in order--all generators and projectors satisfactory, air-tanks and supply-rooms full, all beam-tubes working." "Very well," I said, and picked up the space-phone by which I could communicate with the other cruisers of my squadron. "Dur Nal speaking--we will start in five minutes," I ordered. "Triangle formation, and keep at two light-speeds until we clear Canopus." As the captains of the other cruisers responded their understanding, I turned to the pilot who had just come up into the bridge-room. "Start in four minutes, Jan Allon," I ordered. "Lay our course for Betelgeuse for the present." I heard Jhul Din bellow an order down below and the space-doors clanged shut. Then the whining hum of the great generators in the lower deck began. Jan Allon waited for a few moments, then threw on the power and pulled the cruiser's wheel slightly toward him. Our ship arrowed up at once into the sunlight, the other cruisers following close behind in the familiar triangle formation of the Patrol. In a short time our squadron was clear of Canopus, and with the huge sun glaring behind us like a great white eye we were racing across the galaxy's spaces at many light-speeds toward Betelgeuse. We followed the straightest possible course, and this took us past the Orion nebula, which lies almost directly on the space-route between Canopus and Betelgeuse. The nebula bulked for billions of miles in space beside us, a stupendous burning cloud along whose edge our comparatively tiny cruiser crawled. * * * * * Once the mighty nebula was behind us, it was not long before our squadron reached Betelgeuse and the galaxy's edge. There was no need for us to halt at Betelgeuse; so we passed that sun and in a short time were passing clear out of the galaxy into outer space. Behind us lay the galaxy, a colossal swarm of suns floating in the infinitude of space. Before us lay only space itself, vast, lightless, empty. Far, far across its unthinkable reaches glowed a few little patches of soft, hazy light, galaxies as large as our own but so far away they were hardly visible. Out in space some distance from our galaxy we could descry with our instruments a group of dark bodies coming toward us. They were the score of dark stars approaching the galaxy from the outer emptiness. Our squadron headed right out into the infinite toward them.