With nothing to occupy his mind but fruitless speculation, it is not surprising that he lost all track of the number of feedings. He knew only that he had slept a large number of times, had become deathly sick of lime juice, and was beginning to suffer severely from the lack of other food, when a faint suggestion of weight manifested itself. He looked at his equalizer the instant he noticed the situation and found it dark. The ship had cut its second-order converters, and was applying a very slight first-order acceleration in its original line of flight—the barely perceptible weight was directed toward what Little had found to be the stern. Its direction changed by a few degrees on several occasions, but was restored each time in a few seconds. The intensity remained constant, as nearly as
