which—now that he was in free space in a space-ship—any attempt to land upon an inhabited planet might be frustrated.

In the end he constructed two small wristlets, one for himself and one for Dona to wear. If tuned waves of the Circuit struck them, the wristlets might nullify them. But if the fighting-beams struck, that would be another story.

Twelve days after turning on the overdrive, which by changing the constants of space about the space-ship, made two hundred light-speeds possible, Kim turned it off. He had previously assured that Dona was wearing the little gadget he had built. As he snapped off the overdrive field, the look of the universe changed with a startling suddenness. Stars leaped into being on every side, amazingly bright and astoundingly vari-colored. Cetis Alpha loomed almost dead ahead, a glaring globe of fire with enormous streamers streaming out on every side.

There were planets, too. As the "Starshine" jogged on at a normal interplanetary—rather than interstellar—speed, Dona focused the electron telescope upon the nearest. It was a great, round disk, with polar ice-caps and extraordinarily interconnected seas, so that there were innumerable small continents distributed everywhere. Green vegetation showed, and patches of clouds, and when Dona turned the magnification up to it's very peak, they were certain that they saw the pattern of a magnificent metropolis.

She looked at it hungrily. Kim regarded it steadily. They did not speak for a long time.

"It would be nice there," Dona said longingly, at last. "Do you think we can land, Kim?"

"We're going to try," he told her.

But they didn't. They were forty million miles away when a sudden overwhelming anguish smote them both. All the universe ceased to be....

Six weeks later, Kim Rendell eased the "Starshine" to a landing on the solitary satellite of the red dwarf sun Phanis. It was about four thousand miles in diameter. Its atmosphere was about one-fourth the density needed to support human life. Such vegetation as it possessed was stunted and lichenous. The terrain was tumbled and upheaved, with raw rock showing in great masses which had apparently solidified in a condition of frenzied turmoil. It had been examined and dismissed as useless for human colonization many centuries since. That was why Kim and Dona could land upon it.

They had spent half their store of fuel in the desperate effort to 

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