A little silence fell upon the three men and Manning's image.
Greg broke it. "How about your energy collector?" he asked Craven. "Will
it maintain the ship out here? You get cosmic rays. Not too much else,
I'm afraid."
Craven grinned wryly. "You're right, but we can get along. The
accumulators are practically drained, though, and we won't be able to
store anything. Would you mind shooting us over just a little power?
Enough to charge the accumulators a little for emergency use."
He looked over his shoulder, almost apprehensively.
"There might be an emergency out here, you know. Nobody knows anything
about this place."
"I'll give you a little power," Greg agreed.
"Thank you very much," said Craven, half in mockery. "No doubt you think
yourself quite smart, Manning, getting us out here. You know you have us
stranded, that we can't collect more than enough power to live on."
"That's why I did it," Greg said, and vanished.
_CHAPTER NINETEEN_
Craven watched the _Invincible_ gather speed and tear swiftly through
the black, saw it grow tiny and then disappear entirely, either
swallowed by the distance or snapping into the strange super-space that
existed beyond the speed of light.
He turned from the window, chuckling.