A tense week passed and then the ship neared the spot where a change over to prime-space could be effected. According to Bayne's calculations, 40 Eridani C would be within 40,000,000 miles of them when the ship emerged from hyper space.
And then the Radar section picked up the planetoids. Millions of them, large and small, lay in a globular cluster dead ahead. They spread out in all directions for more than half a parsec ... dull, rocky little worlds without a gram of detectable mass.
All that waited for the Cleopatra in her own cosmos was a hot reception at the hands of the defenders of 40 Eridani C II, while here was mystery at close range. Mystery that was not cosmic in scope ... just a swarm of innocuous seeming planetoids ... the first explorable worlds that they had neared in this universe. Strike decided to heave to and examine their find. Ivy wanted samples and though no one said it in so many words ... no one was anxious for another encounter with the rapacious Eridans. With typically human adaptiveness they had sublimated their fear of the unknown space in which they found themselves. Curiosity took the place of fear and here was something close at hand to probe. Anthropoid inquisitiveness prevailed.
The Cleopatra slowed, stopped. Strike and Cob Whitley suited up and armed themselves with spring-guns. In their clumsy space armor they dropped through Lover-Girl's ventral valve into the void. The monitor's glowing bulk retreated as they jetted toward the swarm of tiny worlds. Their space suits, too, glowed with the witchfire, outlining them against the eternal night.
Back in the monitor's Communications shack, Ivy Hendricks and Celia Graham stood with Bayne and the other officers around the two way communicator that linked the two explorers with the ship.
Out in space, Strike and Cob bound themselves together with a length of thin cable. They dropped down under power toward the planetoid they had selected to explore.
"What's it like?" Ivy's voice crackled in their headsets.
"Can't tell from this distance. We're still a good five miles away," replied Strykalski.
"Looks like any other planetoid to me," averred Whitley.