I knew instinctively that the flame shape was an electrolube—a devouring entity of the void which snaked through deep space close to Saturn's orbit, a whiplash shape of pure force with a hellish affinity for life, its negative charge seeking a positive charge with which to unite!

It was itself alive, the ultimate life form, sentient and polarized, an energy eater that sucked nourishment from electrical impulses.

And there was just enough positive electricity in the human body to give the horror the power to destroy by slashing down in swift, flesh-destroying stabs that could cut through a spacesuit like a knife through jelly!

Flesh and blood had no chance against it.

For one awful instant I looked straight into the eyes of a girl I couldn't save, an instant as long as a lifetime to the poor fool who loved her! No, I'm not raving! Do you think I'd have crawled out into the everlasting night of space if I hadn't known there could be no other woman for me?

I'd never have crawled out into that everlasting night of space for any other woman.

She didn't wait for the horror to slice down. She jerked her knees, tore her wrists free and shut her eyes. Then she was gone. She didn't even move her lips to say good-by. Space was her bridegroom. It took her and she was gone.

I looked away. Not caring how soon death came, knowing I'd be with her if I just stayed with the ship.

I waited for the anguish to hit me. I waited for a full minute. Two. I shut my eyes as she had done.

When I opened them the electrolube had vanished. And when I looked down, the void had grown brighter. Gone was the great ringed disk of Saturn.

Just little frosty stars glittered far-off, mocking. And another planet that was mottled pink and yellow. A ringless planet, swimming in a murky haze, with eleven little moons spinning around it—eight on one side, three on the other. One of the moons was red.

Jupiter is bigger than Saturn, bigger than a thousand Earths. And I was moving away from it on a droning ship's hull, a tiny fleck of matter of no importance in that awful sweep of space. But when I dragged myself back through the gravity panel into the ship my brain was bursting with a despair so vast it seemed to dwarf the vastness of space.

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