The
MAROONER
By CHARLES A. STEARNS
ILLUSTRATOR SUMMERS
Wordsley and Captain DeCastros crossed half a universe—suffered hardship—faced unknown dangers; and all this for what—a breath of rare perfume?
Steadily they smashed the mensurate battlements, in blackness beyond night and darkness without stars. Yet Mr. Wordsley, the engineer, who was slight, balding and ingenious, was able to watch the firmament from his engine room as it drifted from bow to beam to rocket's end. This was by virtue of banked rows of photon collectors which he had invented and installed in the nose of the ship.
The creature was more pitiful than fearsome.
And Mr. Wordsley, at three minutes of the hour of seventeen over four, tuned in a white, new star of eye-blinking magnitude and surpassing brilliance. Discovering new stars was a kind of perpetual game with Mr. Wordsley. Perhaps more than a game.
"I wish I may, I wish I might ..." Mr. Wordsley said.