With an occasional hushed word, the Terrestrians walked through what seemed to be a vast city of the dead, passing sleeping officers, and crewmen by the hundreds. On the third level they came at last to the control room. Here were switchboards, control panels, and dozens of officers, sleeping now, beside their instruments. A sudden dull thudding sound spun Arcot and Wade around, nerves taut. They relaxed and exchanged apologetic smiles. An automatic relay had adjusted some mechanism. They noted one man stationed apart from the rest. He sat at the very bow, protected behind eight-inch coronium plates in which were set masses of fused quartz that were nearly as strong as the metal itself. These gave him a view in every direction except directly behind him. Obviously, here was the pilot. Returning to the top level, they entered the long passages that led out into the titanic wings. Here, as elsewhere, the ship was brightly lighted. They came to a small room, another bunk room. There were great numbers of these down both sides of the long corridor, and along the two parallel corridors down the wing. In the fourth corridor near the back edge of the wing, there were bunk rooms on one side, and on the other were bombing posts. As they continued walking down the first corridor, they came to a small room, whence issued the low hum of one of the motors. Entering, they found the crew sleeping, and the motor idling. "Good Lord!" Wade exclaimed. "Look at that motor, Arcot! No bigger than the trunk of a man's body. Yet a battery of these sends the ship along at a mile a second! What power!" Slowly they proceeded down the long hall. At each of the fifty engine mountings they found the same conditions. At the end of the hall there was an escalator that led one level higher, into the upper wing. Here they found long rows of the bombing posts and the corresponding quartz rods. They returned finally to the control room. Here Arcot spent a long time looking over the many instruments, the controls, and the piloting apparatus. "Wade," he said at last, "I think I can see how this is done. I am going to stop those engines, start them, then accelerate them till the ship rolls a bit!" Arcot stepped quickly over to the pilots seat, lifted the sleeping pilot out, and settled in his place. "Now, you go over to that board there--that one--and when I ask you to, please turn on that control--no, the one below--yes--turn it on about one notch at a time." Wade shook his head dubiously, a one-sided grin on his face. "All right, Arcot--just as you say--but when I think of the powers you're playing with--well, a mistake might be unhealthy!" "I'm going to stop the motors now," Arcot announced quietly. All the time they had been on board, they had been aware of the barely inaudible whine of the motors. Now suddenly, it was gone, and the plane was still as death!