Unknowing of the storm, the _Empress of Kolain_ sped silently through the void, accelerating constantly at one G. Hour after hour she was adding to her velocity, building it up to a speed that would make the trip in days, and not weeks. Her drivers flared dull red no more, for there was no atmosphere for the ionic stream to excite. Her few portholes sparkled with light, but they were nothing in comparison to the starry curtain of the background. Her hull was of a neutral color, and though the sun glanced from her metal flanks, a reflection from a convex side is not productive of a beam of light. It spreads according to the degree of convexity and is lost. What constitutes an apparent absence? The answer to that question is the example of a ship in space flight. The _Empress of Kolain_ did not radiate anything detectable in the electromagnetic scale from ultralong waves to ultra-high frequencies; nothing at all that could be detected at any distance beyond a few thousand miles. The sweep of her meteor-spotting equipment would pass a spot in micro-micro-seconds at a hundred miles; at the distance from Venus Equilateral the sweep of the beam would be so fleeting that the best equipment ever known or made would have no time to react, thus missing the signal. Theorists claim a thing unexistent if it cannot be detected. The _Empress of Kolain_ was invisible. It was undetectable to radio waves. It was in space, so no physical wave could be transmitted to be depicted as sound. Its mass was inconsiderable. Its size as cosmic sizes go was comparatively sub-microscopic, and therefore it would occult few, if any, stars. Therefore, to all intents and purposes, the _Empress of Kolain_ was non-existent, and would remain in that state of material-non-being until it came to life again upon its landing at Venus. Yet the _Empress of Kolain_ existed in the minds of the men who were to find her. Like the shot unseen, fired from a distant cannon, the _Empress of Kolain_ was coming at them with ever-mounting velocity, its unseen course a theoretical curve. And the ship, like the projectile, would land if the men who knew of her failed in their purpose. * * * * * Don Channing and Walt Franks found their man in the combined dining room and bar--the only one in sixty million miles. They surrounded him, ordered a sandwich and beer, and began to tell him their troubles. Charles Thomas listened for about three minutes. "Boy," he grinned, "being up in that shiny, plush-lined office has sure done plenty to your think-tank, Don." Channing stopped talking. "Proceed," he said. "In what way has my perspective been warped?"