"Well, I changed my mind. What would all the girls on Earth say if they knew I hadn't actually seen the ring? Take me back, Mr. Smith. I'll be brave."
Socrates smiled. "That's a good girl," he said, and they dove again for the brightness of the ring. But he almost wished she hadn't changed her mind. Then he could have returned to the spacefield and watched for Norma.
He cut a zigzag course through the hurtling meteors. Someone, he knew, had once bothered to chart all the tiny particles of the ring, but it had taken a lifetime and it was far from accurate. Socrates preferred the seat-of-the-pants method.
In less than two hours they had cut through the width of the ring and ahead was darkness—darker, it seemed, than space itself.
"A thousand miles of void, and then the crepe ring," Socrates explained. "We'll be turning back now. Fun, Mrs. Entwhistle?"
"Great," she agreed, but she had taken off the fishbowl helmet, and now she was mopping her brow. "I must try it again sometime. In a few years, of course—"
Socrates jammed down on the rocket pedal and the fore-tubes blasted their fire against the blackness. The little ship shuddered and Mrs. Entwhistle emitted a sound which could have been the shrill shriek of a tea kettle. Then Socrates turned them slowly in a great arc so as not to harm the delicate two-hundred pound creature sitting by his side with too much acceleration.
Something flashed by beneath them. It could have been a meteor, except that this was a void area. Attraction of the planet Mimas, and the other satellites were such that no meteoric material could exist in this space—which explained the thousand mile separation of the crepe ring.
Yet something had passed them, something shining brilliantly with reflected sunlight.