Kim swung the _Starshine_ back. He saw the dim, diffused spectre of sun's reflection. They drove for it, and presently a minute dark space appeared. It grew against the background of a radiant galaxy, and presently was a huge blackness, and the _Starshine's_ space-radio loop was once more filled with a highly improbable electrical amperage by the supercooled generator in the airlock. The ship ventured cautiously into the black. And later there were lonely, unspeakably desolate little lights of the lost world down below. Kim drove for them with a reckless exultation. He landed in the very centre of a despairing small settlement which had believed itself dead and damned--or at any rate doomed. He shouted out his coming, and Dona cried out the news that the end of darkness was near, and men came surging toward her to listen. But it was Dona who explained, her eyes shining in the light of the torches men held up toward her. Kim had gone back into the ship and was using the communicators to rouse out the mayors of every municipality, and to say he had just reached the planet from Terranova--there was no time to tell of adventures in between--and he needed atmosphere fliers to gather around him at once, with armed men in them, for urgent business connected with the restoration of a normal state of affairs. They came swiftly, flittering down out of the blackness overhead, to land in the lights of huge bonfires built by Kim's orders. And Kim, on the communicators, asked for other bonfires everywhere, to help in navigation, and then he went out to be greeted by the bellowing Mayor of Steadheim. "What's this?" he roared. "No sunlight! No stars! No matter-transmitter! No ships! Our ships took off and never came back! What the devil happened to the Universe?" Kim grinned at him. "The Universe is all right. It's Ades. Somewhere on the planet there's a generator throwing out a force-field. It will have plenty of power, that generator. Maybe I can pick it up with the instruments of the _Starshine_. But we'll be sure to find it with magnetic compasses. What we want is for everyone to flick their compasses and note the time of swing. We want to find the place where the swings get slower and slower. When we find a place where the compasses point steadily, without a flicker--not even up and down--we'll be at the generator. And everybody put on navigation-lights or there'll be crashes!" He lifted the _Starshine_ and by communicator kept track of the search. Toward the polar regions was the logical hiding-place for the generator, because there the chilly climate of Ades became frigid and there were no inhabitants. But it was a long search. Hours went by before a signal came from a quarter-way around the globe.