Lesbee nodded, and noted that the boy ignored the workers in the gardens. He felt vaguely pleased. It was well for people to realize their station in life. And, ever since the boy's birth, several years after the crisis created by Ganarette, he had consciously striven to instill the proper awareness into the youngster.

The boy would grow up with that attitude of superiority so necessary to a commander.

Lesbee forgot that. He tugged the youngster along to the playground adjoining the residential section, then took an elevator to the officers' deck. His father, four physicists from the engineering department, and Mr. Carson, Mr. Henwick, and Mr. Browne were in conference as he entered. Lesbee sank quietly into a chair at the outer edge of the group, but he knew better than to ask questions.

It didn't take long to realize what was going on. The sparks. For days the ship had been moving along through what seemed to be a violent electric storm. The sparks spattered the outer hull from stem to stern. On the transparent bridge it had become necessary to wear dark glasses; the incessant firefly-like flares of light upset the muscular balance of the eyes, and caused strain and headache.

The manifestation was getting worse, not better.

'In my opinion,' said the chief physicist, Mr. Plauck, 'we have run into a gas cloud – as you know, space is not a total vacuum, but is occupied, particularly in and near star systems, by large numbers of free atoms and electrons. In such a complicated structure as is created by the Alpha A, B, C, and Proxima suns, gravity pull would draw enormous masses of gas atoms from the outer atmospheres of all the stars, and these would permeate all the surrounding space. As for the electrical aspects, apparently a disturbance, a flow, has been set up in these gas clouds, possibly even caused by our own passage, though that is unlikely. Interstellar electrical storms are not new.'