Looking carefully, with eyes losing the dazzle of now-vanished suns, one could see infinitely faint, infinitely distant luminosities. The Starshine was somewhere between galaxies, somewhere in an unspeakable gulf between islands of space, in the dark voids which are the abomination of desolation.
There were small clankings aft. The outer airlock door went shut. A little later the inner door opened. And then Kim swam fiercely through weightlessness and clung to Dona, still in her space-suit, unable to speak for his emotion.
The voice of the Mayor of Steadheim arose in the darkness which was the interior of the Starshine—and the outer cosmos for tens of thousands of light-years all about.
Dona now had the face-plate of her helmet open. She kissed Kim hungrily.
"—brought you something," she said unsteadily. "I'm not sure what, but—something. They've separate engines to power their generators on that ship, and there were tanks I thought were fuel-tanks."
"Space!" roared the Mayor of Steadheim, forward. "Who's that talking? Am I dead? Is this Hades?"
"You're not dead yet," Kim called to him. "I'll tell you in a minute if you will be."
There were no emergency-lights in the ship, but Dona's suit was necessarily so equipped. She turned on lights and Kim looked at the two objects she had brought.
"My dear," he told her, "you did it! A little fuel-tank with gallons in it and a complete catalyzer. By the size of it, one of their beams uses an engine big enough for fifty ships like this!"
Clutching at every projection, he made his way to the engine-room. Dona followed.