"I think we'll do it," said McBride. "After all, we're in a space warp, and no one really knows whether the laws of the universe hold in a space warp. Drake hit the Lens at about ten thousand miles per second, was stopped in time to get to one of the fore lens stations, which must have been terrific deceleration--unthinkably high--and it didn't even muss her hair. We'll know in a bit when we are supposed to hit the speed of light." "Then for the love of Mike, what is our limiting velocity?" "The same as any of the gravitic spectra. Gravitic phenomena propagates at the speed of light raised to the power of 2.71828--That's our limiting velocity." "Want to make any bets?" "I don't mind. My guess is as good as yours." "Better," admitted Steve. * * * * * Below, in the pilot room, Sandra Drake was having a state of nerves. She was alone in the driver's seat of a ship destined to exceed the speed of light, and she was scared. For some reason, the men who professed to shy at danger were arguing the possibilities of running above the speed of light while she, who had lived the life of an adventuresome girl, a daredevil, was worrying. She listened through the communicator at their argument and cursed under her breath. They were going at it in a pedantic manner, hurling equations and theorems and postulates at one another like lawyers with a case for the supreme court, not men who were heading for God-Knows-What at a headlong pace under an ever-increasing acceleration. There were all sorts of arguments as to the aspect of the sky as the speed of light was approached. And how it would look at a velocity of more than light. This went on for some time, with Steve Hammond holding out for blackout and John McBride holding for a sky that crawled forward due to the angle-vectors created by the ship's passage across the light rays, until the entire sky appeared before them--all the stars in the sky would be in the hemisphere in front of them, no constellation recognizable. "But your supposition does not recognize the doppler effect," objected Hammond. "Visible light will be out of the visible spectrum." "True enough. But solar radiation extends from down low in the electromagnetic scale to very very high in the extra-hard UV. Visible spectra will be dopplered into the UV, all right, but the radio waves will have an apparent frequency of light, and we shall see the stars by that, I think." "With no change in color?" asked Hammond skeptically. "There will be a change in color, naturally. We'll observe them in accordance with whatever long waves they emit; they will in no way resemble the familiar stars we know." "How's a poor devil going to navigate at any rate?" asked Larry. "With everything out of place--or invisible--what's he going to use for signposts?"