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To our regular readers parts of the account which follows will not be new, but it has seemed to the editors desirable that at this critical juncture all the information available should be collated and presented to the public in the form of a narrative giving as honest a picture as possible of the present situation, and its potentialities.

At 20.58 G.M.T. on the 6th January 2051 the radiooperator of theMadge G . reported to the Captain that he had picked up a message globe and asked for further instructions.

The Madge G. after a cautious route well out of the elliptic to hurdle the asteroid belt had corrected course and was now in fall towards her destination, Callisto, Moon IV, of Jupiter. Her Captain, John G. Troyte, was not pleased by his operator's report. The passage of the asteroids is always a strain for a conscientious man; even at wide berth there is still the chance of lonely outflyers from the main swarm which will go through a ship as if she were a paper hoop. There is not a lot to be done about it: should the outflyer be anything above the size of a football, it is just too bad; if it is smaller, prompt action can save the ship, providing no vital part is hit. Alertness sustained for the long period is extremely tiring and Captain Troyte felt that he had earned a period of repose and relaxation during the fall towards Callisto.

What was more, he was pretty certain it would not turn out to be a messageglobe after all. He had had such a report half a dozen times in the course of his career, and it had always turned out to be untrue. In the whole of his time in space he could only recall five being picked up at all. They were a good idea, only they didn't come off: they'd have been all right if there hadn't been quite so much space for them to get lost in, but, practice being so different from theory, it was little wonder that the clause for their compulsory carriage had been struck out of the shipping regulations. They stood, in his opinion, as little chance of being picked up as a twoounce bottle in midAtlantic, probably less. He went along to the radiocabin himself. The operator was humming in rhythmic harmony with the HighShakers broadcast from Tedwich, Mars, when he entered.

"Turn off that blamed racket," said Captain Troyte shortly. "Now what's all this about a globe?"

The operator clicked out the HighShakers, and touched a switch to bring in the preset receiver. He listened a moment and then handed over the headphones. The Captain held one to his ear, and waited: after a few seconds came an unmistakable da da, da da di. He looked at his watch, timing it. Exactly ten seconds later it came again—da da, da da di. He waited until it had repeated once more.

"Good heavens, I really believe it is," he said.

"Can't be anything else, sir," said the operator, smugly.

"Got a line on it?"

The operator had. He gave the angles. The Captain considered. The globe was ahead. By rough clockface placing, at four o'clock 30 degrees oblique on the last reading, and widening. There was no likelihood of colliding with it.

"Is it coming towards us, or are we chasing it?" he demanded.

"Can't say, sir. At a guess I should say we're more or less chasing it. It's signal strength had improved, but only slowly."

"H'm," said the Captain thoughtfully. "We'll have to get it in. Keep an ear on it. Don't do anything until you're sure the signal strength is past maximum, there'd be a nasty mess if we were to hit it head on. When it's begun to fade get the activator going, and we'll fish it in. But for God's sake do it gently, we don't want the thing hurtling at us like a cannon ball. Better let me know once you've got it started."

The Captain returned to his own cabin more interested than he admitted. The messageglobe was an ingenious contrivance which had looked like being more useful than it had proved. The problem had been to provide a ship with some means of communicating its trouble in case of radio failure or wreck. In theory it was to be discharged in the direction of the nearest spaceline where its signal could scarcely fail to be picked up; in actual use very few had been picked up and it had progressively less chance of being found as the area of space operation increased. The general opinion which had led to its omission from the statutory list of equipment was that the majority of the globes sent off continued to tick out their signals undetected until their power gave out whereupon they floated about in space as additional hazards. There was a feeling that the hazards of space were quite numerous enough without them.

The radio operator hung his phones on a hook where he could hear the intermittent signal from the globe conveniently, pondered whether he should try to listen to the HighShakers at the same time, decided against it, and hunted for the sealed box in which the activator had lain ever since theMadge G . was launched. After study of the instructions which he had not seen since the day when he'd mugged them up for his final examination, he got it set up. Then there was nothing to do but wait.

Two and a half hours later the meter showed the signal strength of the globe to be falling off slightly. He lit a cigarette, took another look at the operating instructions and grunted. Then he pressed a key on the activator, and waited.

Nearly a thousand miles away in space the 2 1/2footdiameter steel globe revolved slowly as it drifted in a leisurely way upon the orbit into which it had fallen. To all appearance it was as inert as any other fragment of flotsam in the void. Then gradually, almost imperceptibly at first, its revolution began to slow. In a few minutes it was revolving clumsily like a ball with its weight out of true. Another five minutes and it failed to complete a revolution, it paused as though just short of top dead centre, swung back, oscillated gently awhile and then came to rest.

Back on theMadge G ., the radio operator called up the navigator who did some quick figuring. Out in space the globe swung a little in response to the calculations. The radio operator pressed another key. An observer, had there been one close to the globe, would have seen little jets of flame spurt from that side of it distant from theMadge G . as the relays went in. Simultaneously he would have watched it break from its orbit and scud away on a course calculated to intersect with that of the ship far out of sight.

The radio operator informed the Captain that the globe was on its way. The Captain joined him, and together they bent over the signalmeter.

"What did you give?" asked Captain Troyte.

"Five seconds on low power, sir," the operator told him.

The strength of reception according to the needle was almost constant.

"H'm. Our own speed, near as damn it," said the Captain after a few minutes. "Better give it the same again."

"Aye, aye, sir."

The operator pressed his key once more. Far away in the shining steel ball the relays clicked as before. Fuel was injected into the miniature combustion chambers and ignited. Little daggers of flame stabbed out into the darkness behind the gtobe, and it thrust forward on its way at twice its former speed.

"That'll do," the Captain said. "You've no idea of its distance yet?"

"Impossible to tell, sir. If the batteries are strong it may be a long way off. If they're down at all it may be only a hundred miles or so away. No way of knowing, sir."

"All right. Tell your relief to keep a check on it, and I'll have the navigator set a watch for it. If it is a long way off it may be a number of hours before we spot it?"

"Yes, sir."

TheMadge G . continued uninterrupted in her fall towards Jupiter. The operator after further consultation with the navigator corrected the globe's course slightly in compensation for the increased speed. Again there was nothing to do but wait while somewhere outside in the blackness of space the little globe tore through the emptiness on a course designed to bring it to a rendezvous with the ship at a point far ahead.

"Better read up on this," said the operator, throwing the instruction book to his relieving operator. "You may have to fish it in."

The relief looked at the book.

"Oh God. Just my bloody luck. Might have known it when I skipped the lecture on the things," he said, gloomily.

Five hours later his telephone rang.

"Think we've spotted it, Bill," said the voice of the assistantnavigator. "Hold on. Let you know in a minute or two."

He came through again in under the two minutes.

"No doubt about it now. Couldn't be sure before because the way it lies you can only see a crescent of it. It's coming in a few points from dead astern, making a fairly acute angle with our own course. Keep your box of tricks handy, and hold on here."

The radio operator arranged the remote control set in front of him and waited, telephone in hand.

"Coming up," said the assistant navigator's voice. "Coming along nicely." He paused. "Overhauling us fast. About three miles or so off I reckon. Doesn't seem to be converging much ... Hang it, it isn't converging at all: it's diverging. Must have pretty well crossed our course behind us. Better bring it over a bit, Bill. Give it a touch on the port tubes. Just a touch, gently as you can ... God, man, call that a touch? It leapt like a frightened kangeroo. Stand by to correct with starboard tubes. She's coming ... coming ... Blast, she's out of the field of this instrument—half a minute ... Yes, there she is swinging right across, and ahead of us now. Correct when I tell you ... ready ... ready... now!"

Through the instrument he caught the little flutter of fire to the right of the sphere as the radiooperator obeyed.

"Okay," he said, "direction good. Travelling dead ahead of us. Only diverging slightly, but she's running away. Get ready to brake her. Better try three seconds on low power ... No, she's still pulling ahead ... Give another two seconds ... No, damn it, that's too much: we'll overrun her. One second low power acceleration ... That's better: that's much better. Now the least possible touch on her starboard tubes, again. And gently this time..."

The jockeying went on for quite a while. Gradually by correction, recorrection and correction again the globe was juggled closer and closer until ship and globe were falling through space together with only a few hundred feet between them. Again the globe was steadied, and once more orientated towards the ship. The operator gave the lightest touch he could on the main tubes, and almost immediately braked her again.

"Great work, Bill," approved the assistantnavigator. "She's still moving, coming in nicely. Stand by for magnets ... I'll tell you when ... ready... now!"

The operator pressed another key. A moment later there was a clang which rang through theMadge G ., as if she had been hit with a sledge hammer.

"Whew," said the radio operator as he wiped his brow and started to search for his cigarette case.

Outside, as the current flowed into the magnets, the drifting globe had swerved in one last wild pounce at the ship, find now clung there like a limpet.

Two spacesuitedclad figures emerged from the port and walked along the side of the ship on their magnetic soles. Reaching the globe, they slid it back along the metal hull and into the air lock. It was trundled in on the main deck, and a hand threw an electric blanket over it to even up the temperature before they went to work on it.

An hour later Captain Troyte received the bunch of papers taken from the message compartment of the globe. He read them through with some surprise and incredulity. Then he picked up the telephone and spoke to the navigator.

"Where's Pomona Negra?" he inquired.

"Where's what, sir?"

"Pomona Negra. I gather it's an asteroid."

"I'll ring you back, sir."

The navigator came back through with his information a few minutes later after consulting his tables.

"Pretty nearly at the other side of its orbit now, sir."

"Other side of the sun, in fact?"

"Yes, sir."

"Good, that lets us out," said the Captain, gratefully. He sent the papers over to the radio operator with instructions to transmit to Chapman Station, Mars, in their entirety.

"Gawd," said the operator. "All that lot! Pity we ever hooked that perishing globe."

Which was truer than he knew.

(Digest of information contained in message globe secured by theMadge G. 6 January 2051. Originals signed by D. L. Foggatt, Master.)

At 10.50 hrs. 20 December 2049, the Research shipJoan III , owned by Tempel Lines, London, and under my command, encountered a space phenomenon hitherto unobserved, or, to the best of my knowledge, unrecorded. One moment all was as usual; the next, without perceptible impact or shock, all instruments were obscured and all windows with them, and radio reception decreased to an almost inaudible whisper.

TheJoan III , three months out from Gillington, Mars, is engaged on exploratory work in the asteroid belt. My crew is composed of men experienced in difficult and dangerous work of the kind, but none of them is acquainted either personally or by hearsay with circumstances like those in which we now find ourselves. Leaving Mars we struck outward in the plane of the ecliptic. Upon approaching the Belt we turned, manoeuvring our approach upon a tangent, and gradually edging our way into the main path at a speed approximately that of the asteroids themselves.

Travelling with them thus and in their orbit, we settled too our work of plotting and charting—copies of such charts being enclosed herewith. For the following four weeks we moved with caution and restraint in that section of the Belt dominated by the large asteroid Pomona Negra, continuing our work of classification and description of the bodies, and occasionally putting investigating parties aground on certain asteroids, though without making discoveries of more than minor interest. Nothing untoward, nothing, in fact, but events of ordinary routine occurred, until on 19th December we sighted a red asteroid.

This we judged to be a body of no great size, estimating its diameter at some three miles, but at a considerable distance from us. It was distinguished from all other objects as a brilliant scarlet crescent glowing almost as though it were afire. Detailed study of it was difficult by reason of other bodies of varying sizes which frequently interposed themselves in the distance that separated us from it. After consideration I gave orders to suspend other work while we investigated the matter. After we had been picking our way towards it for some two hours it was observed that other and smaller asteroids in its neighbourhood were also glowing redly, though whether we had failed to detect them earlier or whether they had only recently become red I am unable to say. They also were difficult to observe on account of erratic and puzzling obscurations. Approximately three hours after first sighting the red asteroid the sudden masking of our instruments and windows occurred.