Steadily, therefore, we watched now, as hour followed hour, as our flier rushed on with speed still slowly mounting, traveling finally at more than two million miles an hour. The throb of its four great generators was as steady as ever, and the pressure of its decreasing acceleration still weighed upon us, but already we had become accustomed to that pressure. So now while I gazed forth with Marlin ahead, Randall was at one of the right windows and Whitely at one of the left, keeping a similar watch. And it was Randall, a few hours later, who sighted the first of the asteroids. He uttered a swift exclamation, pointing to the right and ahead, and as we looked there we saw a small bright point in the blackness of space, a point that with the swiftness of lightning was expanding into a great, dull-gleaming sphere, rushing toward us and drawing our space-flier toward itself! A moment we saw it rushing thus toward us, a great sphere of barren, jagged rock, airless and waterless, turning slowly in space; and then it was looming gigantic just beside us! In that moment, though, my hand had jerked open one of the six levers before me, and instantaneously had shot from our flier's side a great force-ray toward that looming asteroid beside us. The next instant the asteroid's giant rock sphere seemed to flash away from us and disappear with immense speed, but in reality it was our flier that had been pushed away from the asteroid with colossal force by the force-ray I had shot toward it! Instantly I snapped off that ray, the space-flier flashing on in its straight course as formerly. And as I did so Marlin turned for a moment from his watch at the window toward me, gestured to the right toward the asteroid from which we had so narrowly escaped. In the moment we had seen it, I had estimated that one to be a hundred miles or more in diameter. "That would be Vesta," he said, "one of the largest. It's the only one of that size in this part of their region now." "Large or small, I want to see no more of them that close," I said. "Especially when----" "Hunt!--look--to the left!" It was Whitely who had cried out to me, and as I whirled to gaze in the direction in which he pointed, I noticed another swift-expanding sphere of rock, another gleaming asteroid rushing obliquely toward us! Not as great in size as the first one, but it was approaching us with terrific speed, and even as I jerked open one of the switches before me, sent a force-ray stabbing from the flier toward the rushing asteroid, it seemed that that asteroid was touching us, its great rocky surface shutting out all the firmament as it towered there beside us! My ray, though, had been shot forth just in time, had whirled us aside from the onrushing monster's path at the last moment, and as we reeled on, it too had vanished behind us. But now I had glimpsed two larger ones ahead and to the left, and was jerking the flier away from them also.