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no longer than seconds in his enhanced condition. He roused himself and asked Vega a question. “Is it permissible to look into space again? This time not behind us, toward the earth, but before us, toward where we are going?” “Yes,” answered Vega, calmly and indifferently, “but not to the left of us. The sun is in that direction, and you would be blinded. Nor will you see straight ahead, for that is our destination. Look there—to your right—and you will see what you want to see, and should see.” As if it had heard Vega’s words, a section of the ship’s hull on the right became transparent. Once more there were bright stars suspended in a vault of space; large ones, small ones, lone ones, double ones, and clusters of stars in various colors. outer space panorama. A white fuzzy cloud, very faint, was suspended in space near the ship as they traveled. It remained constant and motionless. “What is that white haze, Vega?” Adam asked. “That,” she responded, “is gas. It is nearly all hydrogen. Our velocity is so great that were we to smash into it, it would gradually wear down our ship’s hull. We must have a clear path before us, so our monitor ship constantly beams a magnetic vortex ahead of us. This repels all atoms and molecules, casting them to one side, so it is like traveling through a tunnel as we go forward. The white haze you see is sunlight reflected from those gas particles. It seems motionless because our speed is so great. “Small meteors in our path are deflected in the same manner. The larger meteors are detected by our monitor’s automatic finders, even though the meteors are far distant. At the same time, our mass-ray guns are trained on them and they are disintegrated, that is, atomized. All this takes place faster than you could think.” She had hardly finished when there was an instantaneous flash of white lightning, its rays piercing the wall of their 67 VEGA ALERTS ADAM Something strange broke the monotonous evenness of that