It was evident that, as Whitely had suggested, we were encountering some of the stray meteors that might be expected to whirl here far out from the meteor-swarms of the great rings. And as we watched tensely now for more meteors, it was with something of awe that we gazed toward the huge rings, that we knew to be rushing swarms of countless similar meteors. It was well, as Marlin had said, that we were not called upon to penetrate through or around those great rings, since in their awful whirling swarms of meteors no craft would be able to live even for a moment. But our space-flier was passing the midmost point of those rings; already huge Saturn was beginning to drop a little behind us; and we breathed more freely. And, ironically enough, it was at that very moment of our relief that catastrophe came upon us. There was a wild shout from Marlin, and simultaneously I saw a huge round dark mass looming dead ahead and whirling toward us. Just as I snapped open the control-levers, that great dark meteor's mass had struck our onrushing flier with a tremendous stunning shock! For an instant, as the flier reeled and spun there crazily in the gulf of space, it seemed the end to me, but in a moment more I realized that the great faceted walls had not been penetrated, for the air in the flier was unchanged. Had those walls been pierced, the result would have been the instant freezing to death of all of us. But that death had not as yet come upon us, and as I struggled forward in my chair I saw that the space-flier was still whirling crazily around from the shock and that the throbbing of its great generators had ceased. Beside me Marlin and Whitely and Randall were coming back to realization of their surroundings after that colossal shock, Whitely bearing a nasty cut upon his temple. And as Marlin sprang to the flier's side-window, gazed obliquely from it, he uttered an exclamation. "That meteor just grazed us!" he exclaimed. "If you hadn't jerked the controls over at the last moment, Hunt, it would have hit us head-on! As it is, it smashed through the flier's outer wall, but didn't pierce the inner wall!" "But the generators!" cried Whitely, who had been fumbling at their switches. "They've stopped! When the meteor crashed through the outer wall it must have broken some of our generator-connections between the two walls!" "And the flier's falling!" I cried in turn. "It's falling toward Saturn now, with its force-rays dead--_we're falling into the great rings_!"