DuQuesne then extended his detectors to the terrific maximum of their unthinkable range, increased his already frightful acceleration to its absolute limit, and cruised madly onward in already vast and ever-widening spirals until a grim conclusion forced itself upon his consciousness. Unwilling though he was to believe it, he was forced finally to recognize an appalling fact. The enemy, whoever he might have been, must have been operating from a distance immeasurably greater than any that even DuQuesne's newfound knowledge could believe possible; abounding though it was in astounding data concerning superscientific weapons of destruction.
He again cut their acceleration down to a touring rate, adjusted his automatic alarms and signals, and turned to Loring, his face grim and hard.
"They must have been farther away than even any of the Fenachrone physicists would have believed possible," he stated flatly. "It looks more and more like Seaton—he probably found some more high-class help somewhere. Temporarily, at least, I am stumped—but I do not stay stumped long. I shall find him if I have to comb the Galaxy, star by star!"
Thus DuQuesne, not even dreaming what an incredibly inconceivable distance from this Galaxy Seaton was to attain; nor what depths of extradimensional space Seaton was to traverse before they were again to stand face to face—cold black eyes staring straight into hard and level eyes of gray.
V.
Skylark Three, the mightiest space ship that had ever lifted her stupendous mass from any planet known to the humanity of this, the First Galaxy, was hurtling onward through the absolute vacuum of intergalactic space. Around her there was nothing—no stars, no suns, no meteorites, no smallest particle of cosmic dust. The First Galaxy lay so far behind her that even its vast lens showed only as a dimly perceptible point of light in the visiplates.
The Fenachrone space chart placed other Galaxies to right of and to left of, above and below, the flying cruiser; but they were so infinitely distant that their light could scarcely reach the eyes of the Terrestrial wanderers. Equally far from them, or farther, but in their line of flight, lay the distant Galaxy which was their goal.