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Chapter 5 Thus a small craft hurtled through space, protectively con- veying a man from earth and a woman from Alpha Centauri’s system, to a destination not far as measured in astronautical distance. As they sat comfortably inside, purposefully quiet, the music that Vega had promised Adam pealed through the ship’s interior. A round section of the ship’s shell became a transparent window, a ‘ a again listening to the music in memory. Once more he saw stars suspended in the vault of space. But under the spell of such music as he was hearing they were different to him. There was a special message, silent yet clearly discernible, being communicated to him from that reachless cosmos. Hi Pete ae 1 0 essences of truth that those spheres, those glaring spheres, were in their cores the embodiment of ultimate or absolute heat. More startling was his sudden awareness that every light ray is a small source or container of ultimate heat, for no body can be hotter than its components. It followed that absolute zero does not exist anywhere in the universe. If it does exist, he thought, it must be cloistered i in the very archives of the Creator as the most rare jewel Toae oe rad cow that is. That jewel would be a piece of solid ether. In the quiet reverie within the ship, Adam’s subconscious mind was yielding up to his conscious mind the highlights of his present earth lifetime, his nobler aspirations as well as his baser inclinations, passing like a pageant before him. He felt from deep within that he was being unfolded in preparation for his entry into Vega’s society. He felt he was being readied by the minute, for he was so_ effortlessly grasping within unfolded in was by the he by the minute, for he was so effortlessly “ grasping an understanding of all things—all, that is, except mathematics, was so 72 VENUS, OUR SISTER similar to a porthole. As Adam related it to me that night at our small table, he was knew with a conviction translated to his senses as wondrous, soft