He pressed a button. A glassy pane above the panel glowed into life. As if a portion of the _Saturn's_ prow had been sheared away, I was looking at the vista before us. But it was no longer empty as, according to Biggs, it had been ever since the moment of the "accident." The stark, gray loneliness was relieved now by a monstrous pockmark in space. A giant sphere, imponderably distant, but definitely on our trajectory! Hanson was a man of action, I learned. He leaped to the intercommunicating system. "Chief Garrity! Large body for'rd! Reverse hypes and apply drag instantly. Todd, plot a course revision! Man! What a monster! Biggs, get out the charts. Something solid at last. Maybe we've busted back into our own universe!" Biggs said, "Yes, sir! Right away, sir!" His eyes questioned Hank. But Cleaver shook his head. "Nope, I don't think so. It ain't logical. That's a phenom--a phenom--a pee-culiarity o' the cockeyed universe we're in--Hey! What's goin' on here?" The constant hum of the hypatomic motors below, one I had hardly noticed until suddenly it no longer throbbed in my ears, had subtly altered. A brief instant of silence, a jarring concussion--and a deeper, more resonant sound. Biggs explained, "That's the hypatomics being thrown into reverse. Anti-grav units are activated in the nose of the ship, then when we get the course variation we swing around our objective. Common space practice, Hank." "That's what," said Hank dubiously, "I figgered. Is it common space practice to make a beeline for danger, though, like Billy-be-damned?" And he pointed to the visiplate. Biggs' eyes followed his finger--and Biggs gasped. "Great whirling comets! It's got us caught!" For despite the mounting clamor of the reversed engines, despite the anti-gravitational units of which Biggs had boasted, despite the swiftly redoubled orders and efforts of a shocked Captain Hanson--the _Saturn's_ speed had definitely increased! The figure in the plate was looming larger moment by moment, and even to my untrained eye it was plain that we were slam-banging, hell-for-leather, toward a crackup! Don't ask me what happened in the next few minutes. I wouldn't know. It's all one whirling blind spot in my memory. Up till now, this entire affair had partaken of the nature of a dream. Amusing, not unpleasant, but quite remote and faintly incredible. Now, suddenly, I realized it was not a dream. But that I, Jim Blakeson, publicity representative of Midland U., had somehow been dragged out of the normal routine of everyday life and thrust into a wild, impossible adventure in a world three centuries beyond my time. It was a disturbing awakening. It didn't make matters a bit better to realize that I was now--along with five other twentieth century exiles--in imminent peril of being slapped out of existence by a gigantic planet that shouldn't be in a dull, gray universe that didn't exist! * * * * *