Jan did not notice the beauties and wonders of outer space, for he had seen them many times before, and so he watched his instrument board, increasing his speed until he hurtled through space in the direction of Mars at the rate of two thousand miles per second, eating up the distance at more than seven million miles per hour. While he was in the vicinity of the Earth, a steady stream of small meteorites beat a tattoo upon the space ship, but as he left the Earth farther behind, the meteorites with which he came in contact were few. Many of them were large, and traveling at the rate of ten to twenty miles per second could have damaged his flyer. But an instrument recorded the approach of the large ones, and when one came within a distance of ten thousand miles, a small bell inside the craft started ringing, while a small arrow in a glass case pointed out its direction.

The young astronaut sped on through the ether void for the equivalent of an Earth day. Through space it was eternal night, with a sun shining from out of the blackness. Immeasurable distances off in all directions were millions of suns and worlds. On ahead of him Mars was growing from a dull red point of fire to a rose-colored sphere, appearing as large as the moon does from the Earth. The rotating sphere grew larger, in proportion to the speed of his approach, its two twinkling satellites becoming visible, one just below, and the other to one side, of the planet. Behind him, he saw the Earth as a large, green star of the first magnitude, and on looking sharper, he saw an accompanying point of light beside it.

Jan would have liked very much to have landed on Mars so that he could have stretched his limbs, but he dared not, for the chronometer at his side told him that if he were to intercept the meteor train the other side of Mars, he would need all of his time. He rapidly neared the red planet which now appeared as a huge ball, filling all three of the nearest windows. Jan made a circuit around the planet, passing by the darkened half which lay sleeping under the repose of a Martian night, and continued on towards Jupiter. He sighted the South Pole on Mars, and kept his ship some two hundred thousand miles above it on a direct line towards the great planet Jupiter. He watched a dial which recorded the approach of giant meteors within a distance of a hundred thousand miles, for soon he expected the group of cosmic wanderers to come sweeping along on their aimless journey. If he missed them, it would be necessary to land on Mars and get new bearings at the observatory before he continued the chase, but he disliked doing this for it would take more time and be a reflection upon his efficiency. And Jan was working for a promotion to the passenger limited between Venus and Mars.

The Meteor Train

The bell tinkled! He looked at the dial and saw that the needle pointed straight ahead of him upon the course he was pursuing. The company of meteors were rushing toward him head on. He turned his flyer on a slant, and slackened his speed continuously for hours until finally it was down to twenty miles per second. He was rushing off at an acute angle so that he would avoid a possible collision. He watched the needle and saw that the train of meteors would soon be opposite him. He was careful to place himself on the sunward side of their approach, for had he been on the opposite side, they would have passed within a few feet of his flyer and he would have been unaware of it, except that his dials would have announced their proximity. He now watched the dial which recorded the smaller number of miles, and saw that the meteors were a thousand miles distant. Turning his flyer back in the direction from which he had come, he ran parallel to the course the celestial bodies would pursue, slackening his speed down to ten miles per second. The distance, as his dial informed him, was rapidly being decreased by the oncoming meteor train. It was now within five hundred miles of him, uncomfortably close, considering the fact that he was not entirely certain of its speed. The astronaut was traveling ten miles per second in the same direction as the meteors' course, and the cluster comprising the meteor train was bearing down upon him, so he figured that it must be traveling at approximately fifteen miles per second. He tested it by speeding up his space flyer to the same rate; it gained on him slightly. The young astronaut decided to allow it to pass him, and then come up from behind; so continuing at fifteen miles per second, he awaited its passing, five miles from its course.

He saw it only as a sudden indistinct flicker, for it passed at a speed greater by three thousand miles per hour than his own. Increasing his speed, he began to creep up behind the meteor cluster, preparing for his hazardous work of running alongside one of the meteors at the same exact speed, and hooking on with his grapples. It required nerve, precision and dexterity, and many an astronaut had met his death trying to ride a meteor in the seas of space.

He soon came within sight of the cosmic wanderers and whisked by them. It was hard work attuning his speed exactly to that of the meteor group, and as he slackened his speed, the meteors flashed past him once more, reflecting the sunlight which struck them. It was the delicate control of the little space craft which finally enabled the astronaut to ride even with the meteor train only a hundred yards away. From this distance he surveyed it. The head was composed of three huge meteors better than two hundred feet thick with rough, jagged sides, resembling miniature mountains careening through space. In the wake of the first three, came smaller ones with fragments intermingled with dust.

The young astronaut singled out the nearest of the large meteors and sent his space ship in on a narrow slant which would gradually converge with the course of the meteor, bringing the two together. One hand was ready on the switch operating the grapples, while his other hand rested on the steering controls. All immediate danger would be over when he grappled on to the celestial body, but it was perilous work, requiring experience, skill and steady nerves in order to close successfully upon the giant meteor.

The sun beat its blinding light upon the rugged, uneven side of the huge meteor, throwing into sharp relief every detail. The sunlit portions lay scattered over its face, relieved by numerous shadows due to the fact that the irregular surface did not allow the sunlight to strike all of the meteor's side which faced the sun. These shadows, because the great rock lacked a surrounding atmosphere, lay etched in bold relief, so that the sunlit side of the meteor presented a series of shadows and illuminated crags to the young astronaut.

Probably the remains of an old comet, thought Jan, gazing thoughtfully at the meteor he was nearing slowly but surely. It was odd how queer it was shaped, bulging at the top, and narrowing at the bottom. Somehow, it was an unpleasant reminder of something he had seen but could not place at the moment. He was within a hundred feet of the great piece of rock, and gradually the distance narrowed as they raced along through space together at the rate of sixteen miles a second.

Suddenly, an uncomfortable discovery forced itself upon the mind of the young astronaut. As he neared the meteor, he recognized what it resembled, and why it had stirred his memory so strangely. From a short distance away, it bore the perfect likeness of a death's head! There was the white, bulging forehead, the sloping jaws, and two huge, round shadows, with a third midway below it, for the sunken eyeholes and the nose. Most horrible of all was the mouth, bearing the fixed grin of death! The death's head glared at him malevolently, as if issuing an ominous warning!

Jan Trenton was not superstitious. Superstition had died out completely from the Earth hundreds of years ago. But the abruptness of the discovery, and its gruesome appearance startled the young astronaut and, for the first time in his career as a lone space flyer, he felt himself weighed down with an overwhelming sense of loneliness. Out in this vast depth of endless space he was millions of miles from friends and all manifestations of life with this grinning effigy, one of the freakish coincidences of the Universe, as a solitary companion. From whence had this meteor come? Probably from the region of the asteroids adjacent to Jupiter, possibly from outside the solar system, from some other system of worlds, having traveled to this destiny perhaps for the last billion years or more.

He had half a mind to swerve off from his prospective landing on the huge meteor, and couple on to one of the other two, but he laughed at himself and his unreasonable timidity. He dispelled by ridiculing himself the morbid imaginings, which had been stimulated through sight of the death's head. He prepared to go through with his original plans, despite the fact that the task was strangely distasteful.