cigar-shaped vessel rose to the starry void, spacemen, their visages lined and tanned like cigars, held their cigars aloft in silent salute and gently flicked their ashes, while softly, a cigar band played "Maracas, Why You No Love Me No More?"

Two days out, Brad summoned Ugh. "How fast are we going?"

"Oh, say ... 30,000 miles an hour?"

Brad calculated rapidly and put down his abacus. "At this rate it'll take us 14 years just to get out of our own lousy solar system!" he barked. "Faster!"

Ugh said Yes, Sir, and vice versa. Then he upped the speed to 186,000 miles per second and came back and shyly told Brad.

Brad said "Bah! We'll be 70 years reaching the Big Dipper! Faster!"

"But nothing can't go any faster!" protested Ugh. "According to Einstein—"

"To hell with Einstein!" roared Brad. "Is he paying your salary?"

So they went faster.

The ship sped onward—unless it was upward—to fulfill its Mission. Again and again Brad found himself wondering where he was going. The Mission was a real stiff. He knew only that since there was practically no life anywhere in the solar system, except for good, kind, old Earth—Earth had seen to that—anyone attacking Earth—or not doing so—was obviously somewhere in outer space! But here the trail ended.

Courage, he told himself, courage! After all, was he not the grandson of Pierre Fromage, inventor of the rubberband motor? With a start, he realized he was not.

His own heritage, while covered with peculiar glory, was a more tragic one—the spacemen's heritage. The Broadshoulders were brave, but things happened to them. His grandfather, a traffic officer, had chased a comet for speeding, and had, unfortunately, overtaken it. His father had been spared the fire, but one day, aboard his spaceship, someone spilled a glass of water. The gravity was off at the time, and the water just hung there in mid-air until Brad's father walked into it and drowned.

What would be his own end, he wondered? What other way was there to die? Just then, through the bulkhead, he could hear Ugh swinging in his hammock, playing the violin. He wondered if the rats were dancing, like the last time he'd surprised him. Another thought was on the way, something about rats and a new way to die, but Brad was already asleep, mercifully having a nightmare.

It was morning of the fifth day when the Emergency Alarm (E-A) was suddenly activated! Instantly, a host of automatic devices went off. One turned on the fan, another blew the fuses, a third made the beds. Bells clanged and bugles sounded every call from Battle Stations (B-S) to Abandon Ship (J-r). Brad and Ugh slept through it all. Nothing was wrong, except with the Emergency Alarm (E-A). It wore itself out and the eventful voyage continued.

Brad woke on the ninth day. The 2-day pill he'd taken on the third day had evidently done its work well. He was rested, he felt optimistic again. When he looked out the porthole, he could see plenty of space for improvement.

—But what was that?

There, half obscured in a tumbling, swirling mass of misty gray clouds, he could make out something white! He pressed his nose against the porthole and strained his eyes. It gave him the feeling of peering into a Bendix, as is the custom of spacemen. His mouth went damp-dry. This was it—whatever it was!

"Ugh!" he shouted, all agog. "Ugh! Ugh!"

Ugh dashed in, wheeling a large kaleidoscope. Expertly, they read the directions and trained it on the mysterious formation. The Indicator turned pale.

"By the ring-tailed dog star of Sirius!" barked Brad. "Why, it's nothing more than an enormous gallstone, revolving in space!"

"This is Sirius!" barked Ugh.

"That's what I barked!" snapped Brad. "And don't ask me whose it is! It's big enough to support life, that's the main issue! Prepare to land!"

A strange, yet resplendent, civilization, thought Brad,