He got up and began to tinker with the radiation-operated relay which turned off the transmitter-drive. Presently he looked up. "I'm glad I married you, Dona," he said gruffly. As the _Starshine_ moved closer in, the feeling in the control-room grew tense. The little ship had advanced to within twenty millions of miles of the blue-white sun, and even at that distance there was a detectable X-ray intensity. Kim had turned on a Geiger counter, and it was silent simply because there was no measurable interval between its discharges. A neutron detector showed an indication very close to the danger mark. But Kim had the _Starshine's_ nose pointed to the intolerably glaring sun. The electron telescope showed the sun's surface filling all its field, and because the illumination had been turned so low, raging sun-storms could be seen on the star's disk. Against it, the black silhouette of the planet was clear. It was small. Kim estimated its diameter at no more than six thousand miles. The _Starshine's_ gyros hummed softly and the field of the telescope swayed until the planet was centered exactly. There was a little sweat on Kim's forehead. "I--don't mind taking the chance myself, Dona," he said, dry-throated. "But I hate to think of you.... If we miss, we'll flash into the sun." "And never know it," said Dona, smiling. "It'll be all over in the skillionth of a second--if we miss. But we won't." "We're aiming for the disk of the planet," he reminded her. "We have to go in on transmitter-speed to cut the time of our exposure to hard radiation. That speed will make the time of exposure effectively zero. But we have to move at a huge multiple of the speed of light, and we have to stop short of that planet. It may not be possible!" "Do you want me to press the button, Kim?" Dona said softly. He took a deep breath. "I'll do it. Thanks, Dona." He put his finger on the stud that would throw the ship into transmitter-drive, aimed straight at the disk of planet against the inferno of sun beyond. There was nothing more certain than that to miss the planet would fling them instantly into the sun. And there was nothing more absurd than to expect to come out of transmitter-drive within any given number of millions of miles, much less within a few thousands. But-- Kim pressed the stud. Instantly there was blackness before them. A monstrous, absolute blackness filled half the firmament. It was the force-field-shielded planet, blotting out its sun and half the stars of the Galaxy. Kim had made a bull's-eye on a target relatively the size of a dinner-plate at eleven hundred yards. More than that, he had stopped short of his target, equivalent to stopping a bullet three inches short of that place. He said in a queer voice: "The--relay worked--even backward, Dona." 8 _Dark Barrier_