"It was all intended! I could feel it when I lay there in my stupor--just as if I was a part of it and knew where we were going and why. It's a soulless thing! We don't mean anything to it--not any more than grubs. This is only the beginning--it's going to be more and more terrible. We'll be ground to fragments--" She closed her lips and stared, shudderingly, as if into space. McGruder eyed her with resentment. "It's a lot of hogwash," he asserted with hollow confidence. * * * * * The nine days' wonder of it gradually became common-place to the rest, but Marlin spent a greater share of his waking time at the observation post. The three moons were joined by more. There were presently a number of gleaming bodies revolving around the sphere, the count increasing almost at every revolution. At one time, Marlin counted eighteen of fairly good size and no doubt several were out of range of the periscope. The strangeness of it was slowly borne upon him. "Why should these planetoids be revolving around us?" he questioned. "They're reputed to have eccentric orbits, but we seem to have barged in on a small system revolving around one common center. And the most cockeyed thing of all is that we're apparently that center." There might be some other explanation, but the reasonable one seemed to be that the vessel was swinging through the vast planetoid belt, "picking up" stellar bodies as it approached them. Each rock concretion drawn into the ever-growing system increased its mass attraction for other bodies, and thus the accumulation grew, like an immense snowball. Theoretically, there was support for the assumption. The plates within the sphere exercised an attraction which approximated Earth gravity. Normally, the attraction of so small an object in space would have been slight, but thus augmented, it might act as a magnet, drawing much larger bodies out of their natural orbits. "Still, if that's the case," he reasoned, "they'd keep drawing closer. They'd eventually crush our sphere by the very force of its own gravity." His mind pictured a churning mass of mountainous and smaller rocks, rolling round and round each other in ever-narrowing orbits, crashing and grinding together, probably generating heat in the process, eventually fusing into a solid mass. "Nice prospect," he reflected with a shudder. "Where'll we be when that takes place? Somewhere near the center, from all indications." The prospect revealed through the periscope was awe-inspiring, but increasingly fearsome. For one exciting hour, Marlin watched while two planetoids collided and slowly ground each other to fragments. On another occasion, a huge mass lazily crossed his field of vision so close that he could discern great areas of what looked like ice, mingled with towering spires of rock. He could easily imagine himself looking down on a mountain glacier.