Standing there in the dark little room, its only sound the deep humming of the generators below and its only lights the hooded glows which illuminated the dials and switches before me, I gazed intently through the broad fore-window, into that crowding confusion of swarming suns that lay around us, that medley of jeweled fires in which the great star Alto burned like a living flame. For a long time I gazed toward the star that was our goal, and then my thoughts were broken into by the sound of Sarto Sen reascending the stair behind me. I half turned to greet him, then turned swiftly back to the window, stiffening into sudden attention. My eyes had caught sight of a small patch of deep blackness far ahead, an area of utter darkness which was swiftly expanding, growing, until in less than a second, it seemed, it had blotted out half the thronging stars ahead. For a moment the sudden appearance of it dumfounded me so that I stood motionless, and then my hands leaped out to the controls. I heard Sarto Sen cry out, behind me, and had a glimpse of the darkness ahead, obscuring almost all the heavens. The next moment, before my hands had more than closed upon the levers, all light in the conning-tower vanished in an instant, and we were plunged into the most utter darkness which I have ever experienced. At the same moment the familiar hum of the vibration-generators broke off suddenly. I think that the moment that followed was the one in which I came first to know the meaning of terror. Every spark of light had vanished, and the silencing of the vibration-generators could only mean that our ship was drifting blindly through this smothering blackness. From the cruiser's hull, below, came shouts of fear and horror, and I heard Sarto Sen feeling his way to my side and fumbling with the controls. Then, with startling abruptness, the lights flashed on again in the conning-tower and through the windows there burst again the brilliance of the starry heavens. At the same moment the vibration-generators began again to give off their deep humming drone. Sarto Sen turned to me, his face white as my own. Instinctively we turned toward the conning-tower's rear-window, and there, behind us, lay that stupendous area of blackness from which we had just emerged. A vast, irregular area of utter darkness, it was decreasing rapidly in size as we sped on away from it. In a moment it had shrunk to the spot it had been when first I glimpsed it, and then it had vanished entirely. And again we were racing on through the familiar, star-shot skies. I found my voice at last. "In the name of the Power," I exclaimed, "what was _that_?" Sarto Sen shook his head, musingly. "An area without light," he said, half to himself; "and our generators--they, too, could not function there. It must have been a hole, an empty space, in the ether itself." I could only stare at him in amazement. "A hole in the ether?" I repeated.