heavens.

After a pause, Kim turned to Dona.

"Look up Altair," he said. "We came a very long way indeed."

There was silence save for the rustling of the index-volume as Dona searched for Altair in the sun-index. Presently she read off the space-coördinates. Kim calculated, ruefully.

"That wasn't space-travel," he said drily. "That was matter-transmission. The 'Starshine' is a matter-transmitter, Dona, transmitting itself and us. I wasn't aware of any interval between the time I pressed the stud and the time the altered field shut off. But we came almost a quarter across the galaxy."

"It was—horrible," Dona said, shivering. "I thought Alphin Three was bad, but the tyranny here is ghastly."

"Alphin Three is a new planet," Kim told her grimly. "This one below us is old. Alphin Three has been occupied for barely two hundred years. Its people have relatively the vigor and the sturdy independence of pioneers, and still they're sheep! We're in an older part of the galaxy now and the race back here has grown old and stupid and cruel. And I imagine it's ready to die."

He bent forward and made a careful adjustment of the light-operated distance-gauge. He cut it down enormously.

"We'll try it again," he said. He pressed the stud....

CHAPTER VI

Haven at Last

An increasing sense of futility and depression crept over Kim and Dona during the next few days.

They visited four solar-systems, separated by distances which would have seemed unthinkable before the alteration of the overdrive.

There was no longer any sensation of travel, because no distance required any appreciable period of time. Once, indeed, Kim commented curtly on the danger that would exist if they went too close to the galaxy's edge. With only the amount of received light to work the cut-out switch, under other circumstances they might have plunged completely out of the galaxy and to unimaginable distances before the switch could have acted.

"I'm going to have to put a limiting device 

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