The minutes dragged past, forming into an hour, and another, and another, while we watched and waited there, and steadily still the swarm crept on toward us, moving on now at a steady velocity of five to six hundred light-speeds. Our ships hung silent and motionless still in space, with away to our left the flaming torches of the galaxy's thronging suns, and to our right the great vault of blackness out of which that mighty swarm of matter was rushing toward us. Straight toward us almost it was heading on the space-chart, and now, as it crept over the last half-inch that separated it on the chart from our ships, I gave an order that sent our ships and those behind it slanting steeply upward. In swift, great spirals our squadron climbed, and within a moment more was hanging thousands of miles higher in space than before, our prows pointed now toward the galaxy. Tensely I watched the space-chart and then, just as the great swarm of black dots reached the dozen dots that were our ships, I uttered a single word, and instantly our squadron was racing toward the galaxy at a full five-hundred light-speeds, moving now at the same speed as the great swarm and hanging thousands of miles above it as it rushed on through space toward the galaxy. It was the familiar maneuver of the Interstellar Patrol in reconnoitering a meteor-swarm, to hang above it and race at the same speed with it through space, but never yet had we essayed it on such a swarm as this one, moving as it was at an incredible speed for inanimate matter, and without any signs about it of the ether-current which we had thought was the reason for that speed. Now, as our ships hummed swiftly on, I stood with Jhul Din at the projecting distance-windows, gazing down into the mighty abyss of space that lay beneath us. Somewhere in that abyss, I knew, the great swarm was racing on at the same speed as ourselves, but as we gazed tensely down our eyes met nothing but an impenetrable darkness, the cold, empty blackness of the infinite void. I turned, signaled with my hand to Korus Kan at the controls, and then our ship began to drop smoothly to a lower level as it raced on, following a downward-slanting course now with the ships of our squadron behind close on our track. Down we slanted, still racing onward at the same terrific speed, while the Spican and I searched the darkness beneath with our eyes through the thick-lensed protecting windows, yet still was nothing visible in the tenebrous void below. Lower, still lower, our ships slanted, and then suddenly Jhul Din gave utterance to a short exclamation. "Down there!" he cried, pointing down through the little window. "Those shining points--you see them?" * * * * *