We looked at each other, a little helplessly, then down again toward the smooth and gleaming surface below. In that surface was no visible opening, no sign of joint or crack, even, nothing but the smooth blank metal. Then with sudden resolution I thrust forward the levers in my hands, sent our cruiser racing low across the surface of the giant, metal-sheathed planet, while we gazed intently across that surface in search of any sign that might explain the enigma of its existence. On we sped, while beneath us flashed back the smooth metal plain, mile after endless mile. Then, gazing ahead, my eyes suddenly narrowed and I raised a pointing hand. For there, far ahead, I had glimpsed an opening in the gleaming surface, a round black opening that was resolving itself into a vast circular pit as our cruiser raced on toward it. Nearer and nearer we flashed toward it, with Sar Than and Jor Dahat beside me gazing forward, their interest as tense as my own. And now we saw that the pit was of gigantic size, its circular mouth all of five miles in diameter, and that from its center there drove up toward the zenith a flickering beam of pale and ghostlike white light, so pale as hardly to be visible, a livid white ray that stabbed straight up toward the fires of the nebula far above. We were very near to the pale beam, now, flashing above the huge pit straight toward it. I had a glimpse of the great pit's perpendicular black metal walls, dropping down for miles into depths inconceivable, of something in those dusky depths that burned like a great white star of light, and then Jor Dahat suddenly uttered a choking cry, flinging an arm out toward the livid ray before us. "That ray!" he cried. "It's not light--it's force! The nebula--stop the ship!" At that cry my hand flew out to the levers, but a moment too late. For before I could throw them back, could slow or stay our progress, we had raced straight into the great pale beam. The next moment there came a terrific crash, as though we had collided with a solid wall; our ship rocked drunkenly in midair for a single instant, and then was whirling crazily downward into the depths of the mighty pit below us. 3 My only memory now of that mad plunge downward is of the pilot room spinning about me, and of the whistling roar of winds outside caused by the speed of our fall. The shock of our collision had apparently silenced our generators, and it was moments before I could struggle up to the controls and make an effort to start them. I jerked open the switches and there came a hum of power from beneath; but the next moment with a jarring, grinding shock our cruiser had met the great pit's floor, flinging us once more to the floor.