The Venture was already roaring out to the orbit of Titan. Stilicho had changed course, and the huge, ringed bulk of Saturn and the small, bright sun lay dead astern. They were heading out toward the farthest limit of the system, toward the Solar System's last home of mystery.
Black reaction and apprehension were cold in John Thorn's heart as he looked haggardly ahead. Could they hope to overtake Cheerly's ship when it had such a start? And. if they did not, and so did not have Lana's secret knowledge to guide them, what would be their fate when they reached mysterious Erebus?
CHAPTER XVI
Forbidden World
The frontier of the Solar System! A vast and gloomy darkness, a region of eternal night remote by six billion trackless miles from the far, bright star of the sun. A cold and awful immensity of space beyond which stretches only the shoreless sea of the interstellar void.
Yet even out into these far, dark spaces reached the invisible grip of the sun, to hold the outermost of its planetary children. Out here in eternal silence and darkness, far from the flaming orb that gave it birth, solemnly moved the dim world of Erebus on its slow, stupendous patrol.
A ship was moving out through the colossal dark toward the last planet. It was moving at tremendous speed under inertia, yet it seemed merely to be crawling through the vast emptiness as it held its course toward the dim, slowly enlarging sphere of Erebus.
John Thorn peered fixedly from the window of the control-room at the mysterious world ahead. It was like a little ghost-world, shining in the dark vault with a feeble blue light.
"It must have an extraordinarily high albedo to reflect so much sunlight at this distance,” Thorn muttered.
"Yes, it's cursed queer,” Sual Av agreed, frowning intently.