II
Eternal night glimmered black and velvety, flecked with dots of pale blue-white. All around lay the vast universe; silent, but alive with glaring suns and great orbs that were the planets, known and unknown. Here teemed life among the far reaches of vast space.
And like an immortal, living ether, Jonathan Morgan sped onward and outward into that space. Black meteors went through him and harmed him not. Somehow he found himself aware of them, knowing that they only pushed the gaseous components of his form aside; that when they had passed, his body resumed its former shape. He did know that they could not hurt him; but why, he was unaware.
The infinitely tiny motes of matter that were Jonathan Morgan swelled and grew and expanded. He fled upward and downward with the speed of thought. He grew and towered, and the Earth dropped away below the mad onrush of this strange, galactic giant.
He passed Mars swiftly, casting a curious glance at its canals, seeing half-buried cities beneath ancient sea-bottoms. Beyond the asteroid belt he found frozen Jupiter, and Saturn with its ring, and saw strange forms of life that eked out existences on icy worlds.
In a moment he passed over Pluto and the dark planet beyond it. There was life here, too, of a queer, alien sort. Not flesh, but another form of matter. He thought idly that he would like to study it, but he had not the time.
For the call that had been vague on Earth was now grown peremptory, summoning.
In answer to that call, he fled onward in a rush of gas that seemed to whisper as it sped through the cold voids of space.
In short seconds he was beyond the outermost limits of Sol's domain, ever expanding....