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As Earth's faster-than-light spaceship hung in thevoid between galaxies, Arcot, Wade, Morey andFuller could see below them, like a vast shining horizon,the mass of stars that formed their own islanduniverse. Morey worked a moment with his slide rule,then said, "We made good time! Twenty-nine lightyears in ten seconds! Yet you had it on at only halfpower...."
Arcot pushed the control lever all the way to fullpower. The ship filled with the strain of flowingenergy, and sparks snapped in the air of the controlroom as they raced at an inconceivable speedthrough the darkness of intergalactic space.
But suddenly, far off to their left and far to theirright, they saw two shining ships paralleling theircourse! They held grimly to the course of the Earthship, bracketing it like an official guard.
The Earth scientists stared at them in wonder."Lord," muttered Morey, "where can they have comefrom?"
John W. Campbell first started writing in 1930 whenhis first short story, When the Atoms Failed, was acceptedby a science-fiction magazine. At that time hewas twenty years old and still a student at college. As thetitle of the story indicates, he was even at that timeoccupied with the significance of atomic energy andnuclear physics.
For the next seven years, Campbell, bolstered by ascientific background that ran from childhood experiments,to study at Duke University and the MassachusettsInstitute of Technology, wrote and sold science-fiction,achieving for himself an enviable reputation in the field.
In 1937 he became the editor of Astounding Storiesmagazine and applied himself at once to the task ofbettering the magazine and the field of s-f writingin general. His influence on science-fiction since thenhas been great. Today he still remains as the editor of