Russ lounged in the control chair and stared out the vision plate. There was nothing to see, nothing to do. There hadn't been anything to see or do for days. The controls were locked at maximum and the engines still hammered their roaring song of speed and power. Before them stretched an empty gulf that probably never before had been traversed by any intelligence, certainly not by man. Out into the mystery of interstellar space. Only it didn't seem mysterious. It was very commonplace and ordinary, almost monotonous. Russ gripped his pipe and chuckled. There had been a day when men had maintained one couldn't go faster than light. Also, men had claimed that it would be impossible to force nature to give up the secret of material energy. But here they were, speeding along faster than light, their engines roaring with the power of material energy. They were plowing a new space road, staking out a new path across the deserts of space, pioneering far beyond the 'last frontier.' Greg's steps sounded across the room. "We've gone a long way, Russ. Maybe we better begin to slow down a bit." "Yes," agreed Russ. He leaned forward and grasped the controls. "We'll slow down now," he said. Sudden silence smote the ship. Their ears, accustomed for days to the throaty roarings of the engines, rang with the torture of no sound. Long minutes and then new sounds began to be heard ... the soft humming of the single engine that provided power for the interior apparatus and the maintenance of the outer screens. "Soon as we slow down below the speed of light," said Greg, "we'll throw the televisor on Craven's ship and learn what we can about his apparatus. No use trying it now, for we couldn't use it, because we're in the same space condition it uses in normal operation." "In fact," laughed Russ, "we can't do much of anything except move. Energies simply can't pass through this space we're in. We're marooned." Greg sat down in a chair, gazed solemnly at Russ. "Just what was our top speed?" he demanded. Russ grinned. "Ten thousand times the speed of light," he said. Greg whistled soundlessly. "A long way from home." * * * * * Far away, the stars were tiny pinpoints, like little crystals shining by the reflection of a light. Pinpoints of light and shimmering masses of lacy silver ... star dust that seemed ghostly and strange, but was in reality the massing of many million mighty stars. And great empty black spaces where there was not a single light, where the dark went on and on and did not stop. Greg exhaled his breath softly. "Well, we're here." "Wherever that might be," amended Russ. There were no familiar constellations, not a single familiar star. Every sign post of the space they had known was wiped out. "There really aren't any brilliant stars," said Russ. "None at all. We must be in a sort of hole in space, a place that's relatively empty of any stars."