with you."

Kim scowled at the weird pattern of strangely-colored stars upon the vision-plate.

"We're using a lot of our fuel in trying for Cetis Alpha's planets. I'd like to—well—have a marriage ceremony."

Despite her anxiety, Dona burst out laughing.

"It's about time, you big lug!" she cried. "I was beginning to lose hope."

Kim laughed too. "All right. I'll see if it can be managed. But if warnings have been sent ahead of us, marriage may be difficult."

4

 Outcasts of Space

Like a silver arrow, the "Starshine" continued to bore on through a weird, synthetic Universe, two hundred times faster than light. In the space-ship Kim worked angrily, making desperate attempts to devise a method of nullifying the non-individualized fighting beams with 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 himself 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 varicolored. 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 cloud, and when Dona turned the magnification up to its very peak, they were certain that they saw the pattern of a magnificent metropolis.

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