the drug, I squirmed, reached up and grabbed him by the throat. But another man was on us. Jim's shot sounded again; and then as I fought, I saw several dark shapes leaping on him. His panting oaths mingled with the girl's scream.

In the melee glass hit my face, breaking with the sticky drug oozing out on me. A man's fist followed it, with a crack that made my head burst into roaring light before I drifted off into an abyss of nothingness....

II

I came to with the sound of distant throbbing in my ears. It seemed that I was lying on a metal grid-floor; and as I stirred, a familiar voice sounded.

"Thank the Lord, you're coming out of it at last."

It was Jim, here on the floor with me, bending anxiously over me in a luminous darkness. His pug-nosed face grinned down at me.

"I sure thought you might never come back, Art. You been a day, sleeping off that damned drug."

Dizzily I tried to sit up as he held me. "What—what happened? Where the devil are we?" Then I remembered the fight. "Venta—" I murmured.

"She's all right. I've seen her, and talked with her."

I could see that Jim and I were alone in a small, triangular metal apartment. A closed door was to one side. And to the other, there was a round bull's-eye window. It was black out there, with bright white points of stars. The thrumming was a faint distant electronic throb, off in this strange interior.

I could feel my strength rapidly coming back. I sat up, shoving Jim away. "I'm all right now. Where are we?"

He grinned wryly. "Hold your breath for a shock. We're out in Space, plenty far. I guess, by now, we're on our way to Venus!"

Out in Space! How often, like everyone else in our modern world of science, I had envisaged it, and wondered why it had never been made possible.

"On the way to Venus?"

"So they tell me, an' Lord knows I wouldn't doubt it. If you don't believe me, come take a look."

With his arm around me, I staggered dizzily to the bull's-eye porte. It was an amazing scene! The Heavens everywhere were a black vault, strewn with myriad white gems of the blazing worlds. Filling 

 Prev. P 5/25 next