"We should reach the cloud's edge within ten hours," was all I said.
* * *
Minutes later our cruiser was slanting up at mounting speed from that swarming world of Betelgeusans, our crew rushing about its throbbing generators and Korus Kan and Jhul Din and I in its pilot room. With Korus Kan at the wheel the long ship rose through the glare of the great crimson sun and threaded through the masses of interstellar shipping until it was speeding through the black gloom of space, with all about us the shining hosts of the galaxy's suns.
Far ahead there stood out against the farther stars what seemed a small black spot in the galaxy's star-swarm. It was, we knew, the colossal cosmic cloud of darkness absolute into which thousands of ships had been drawn to some strange fate, and whose secret, if secret there were, we must discover. With the cruiser's hull quivering slightly and with the generators beneath talking louder we hurtled at thousands of light-speeds across the galaxy toward that lightless region.
Hour upon hour our cruiser flew like a thing of thought through the vast spaces toward the cloud. At the highest speed safe to use inside the galaxy we were traveling, and as we drew nearer the cloud's edge our space-chart showed that no other ships were in space about us now, all avoiding the cloud's strange menace. But our own craft hurtled steadily on, and steadily the vast region of blackness grew greater in the firmament before us.
In the cruiser's instrument room Jhul Din and I prepared the intricate recording-instruments on which the success of our venture depended. These were mechanisms connected to various indicators outside the hull, which recorded all ether-currents and drifts and disturbances around the ship, all electrical or radioactive or other forces, and all conditions of temperature and pressure.
If it was really some unheard-of and recurring force or some tremendous ether-disturbance that had swept the luckless ships into the cloud, we should be able to determine its nature and source with these aids.
From the instrument room's window Jhul Din and I watched the great cloud largen as we neared it. It seemed soon like a colossal black curtain across the universe, blotting half the galaxy's suns from sight, stretching across billions of miles. What mysteries did that vast and enigmatic region of lightlessness contain?
At last Korus Kan's voice came down through the order-phone from the pilot room. "We're within two million miles of the cloud's edge," he reported. "What orders?"
"Turn right and coast at a hundred light-speeds along its edge," I told him. "Jhul Din and I will start our observations, and I'll let you know when to change course or speed."