Still we were racing onward, our great space-flier hurtling on and on through that asteroid-filled region, escaping those great rushing spheres of death, sometimes by the narrowest of margins. Hour upon hour, keeping our sleepless watch at the flier's windows, we flashed on, its colossal speed still mounting as more and more of our generators' power was turned into the great rear force-ray that pressed back towards Earth and that shot us outward. By that time Earth had become but a bright white star behind us, the sun's size and brilliance decreased by a third or more already. But it was not backward we were gazing; it was ahead. We were striving with all our powers to avoid the asteroids that hurtled about us. We saw, once or twice, families or groups of those asteroids moving together, sometimes dozens together, and strove to give these a wide berth. On we raced, veering now to this side and now to that, with Jupiter looming ever greater ahead and to the right as we approached the end of the asteroidal belt. But it was as we approached its end, at last, that our greatest peril came suddenly upon us. For I had shot the space-flier sidewise with terrific speed to avoid an onrushing small asteroid, and the next moment when it slowed its sidewise rush, found that I had unwittingly shot it into the very heart of a great family of full two-score of the little planets! All about us in that moment it seemed were asteroids, gleaming spheres at the very center of whose swarm our flier flashed, and into which by some miracle our sidewise rush had projected us, unharmed! I heard the hoarse cries of Marlin and Randall beside me, in that moment, the shout of Whitely, and knew that only another miracle could ever take us out of that swarm unharmed. Already, in that split-second, three of them were looming great to our right, another one ahead and to the left, and to escape one was to crash upon another. There was no time for thought, no time for aught save a lightning-like decision, and in that fractional instant I had made that decision, and as our flier hurtled through the great swarm of asteroids, had shot out its great force-rays to right and left and above and beneath us, driving out in all directions from our flier as it flashed through the great swarm!