"I'll tell the universe that I don't look at things the way you do!" barked DuQuesne scathingly. "When I go back to Earth--if I go--I shall at least have tried. I've got a life-sized picture of myself standing idly by while some one else tries for seven hundred years to decipher the indecipherable!" "There speaks the impetuousness of youth," the old man chided. "I have told you that we have proved that at present we can do nothing whatever for the occupants of _Skylark Two_. Be warned, my rash young friend; do not tamper with powers entirely beyond your comprehension." "Warning be damned!" DuQuesne snorted. "We're shoving off. Come on, Loring--the quicker we get started the better our chance of getting something done. You'll be willing to give me the exact bearing and the distance, won't you, Rovol?" "We shall do more than that, son," the Green patriarch replied, while a shadow came over his wrinkled visage. "Your life is your own, to do with as you see fit. You have chosen to go in search of your friends, scorning the odds against you. But before I tell you what I have in mind, I must try once more to make you see that the courage which dictates the useless sacrifice of a life ceases to be courage at all, but becomes sheerest folly. "Since we have had sufficient power several of our youths have been studying the fourth dimension. They rotated many inanimate objects into that region, but could recover none of them. Instead of waiting until they had derived the fundamental equations governing such phenomena they rashly visited that region in person, in a vain attempt to achieve a short cut to knowledge. Not one of them has come back. "Now I declare to you in all solemnity that the quest you wish to undertake, involving as it does not only that entirely unknown region but also the equally unknown sixth order of vibrations, is to you at present utterly impossible. Do you still insist upon going?" "We certainly do. You may as well save your breath." "Very well; so be it. Frankly, I had but little hope of swerving you from your purpose by reason. But before you go we shall supply you with every resource at our command which may in any way operate to increase your infinitesimal chance of success. We shall build for you a duplicate of Seaton's own _Skylark Three_, equipped with every device known to our science, and we shall instruct you fully in the use of those devices before you set out." "But the time--" DuQuesne began to object.