Gods of Space

The weird purple glow of the planetoid was apparent now even to the naked eye. The end of Roy Atwoods long lonely journey was at hand. In the narrow control-turret of his small spaceship he sat gazing. Planetoid-150 in the belt out here far beyond Mars was a great leaden disc now occupying nearly a quarter of the firmament. And the purple glow of the Xarite was puzzling. On Earth young Atwoods father had located the treasured substance with a giant electro-spectroscope; seen it after patient search as a tiny tracery a faint band upon the prismatic graph of the light from this distant world.