The beams thickened as the automatic control advanced in timed steps. Evaporation from the lake of liquid helium increased as the superconductors warmed slightly from the terrible load. A wrenching--_feeling_--came to them. A meter indicated that one of the beams--the sphere beam clutching a five thousand mile sphere of stellar center--indicated a movement of point one seven four inches. * * * * * The automatic controller went up another stepless interval, and the wrenched--_feeling_--increased. Through the viewport, the small flaming disk of VanMaanen's Star blazed at them. It looked as though it were quite ignorant of the cosmic forces that were tearing at its vitals. There was an air of saucy disregard in its placid, immobile brightness. The pressure increased. "At this point we jerked up a slab of Brimstone's hard crust," remarked Hendricks. But Brimstone was not in the link. Brimstone was not even present. The inflexible tripod of energy would scorn to move with the planet. The control room and the main development housing connected to the high base of the projector network were depending upon the invisible tripod of energy, deep in space. Brimstone was a large moon, a gibbous last quarter, out through one side window. The automatic control went higher. And as the pressure increased between the limbs of the tripod, even so increased the power intake from the star itself. Did a star have within it enough energy to cause its own destruction? They did not find out. The _feeling_ of a wrenching increased, and then leaped into full being. Nausea, sheer instantaneous torture, a pulsed wave of pain, a shattering sensation of intolerable noise, a blinding light that came though the eyes were closed. But these things were merely the physical and mental effects caused by-- By what? There had been no grinding crash. There had been no failure of the beams. Yet the meters read zero. Both intake and output. Test power and operation perfect registered on the string of indicators. Nothing wrong-- --but the flaming disk of VanMaanen's Star was gone. Something had failed, but it hadn't been the equipment. Something had failed, but it hadn't been the star. And the station and the control room was drifting aimlessly in space. Inspection showed that no star was close enough to be VanMaanen's Star. There were no stars within a couple of light-years from them. Above their heads, the projectors were idling in their slack gimbals, the tie-beams were off. The solar intake beams were taking in no power. The lake of helium, a twenty-foot open bath on the roof of the housing, was lying quiescent. The entire assembly and assemblage was as it had been before the initial surge of power, excepting that Brimstone and his bright primary were nowhere to be seen. XIX. "Well, what happened?" asked Lane. "You tell me," Downing said.