"Explorers into Infinity" by Ray Cummings

The April 1927 issue of Weird Tales has a cover which depicts an ogre about to grind an attractive young woman into paste with a tree. Total evil! This bit of devilry illustrates a serialized novella by Ray Cummings, and that work is the topic of our discussion today. We've read things by Mr. Cummings before, as well as Fred Pohl's choice words about the fellow. An actual man of science who worked with Thomas Edison, Cummings penned space adventures and Edgar Rice Burroughs-type planetary romances but also some pretty terrible exploitation stories. "Explorers into Infinity" and with its sequel "The Giant World" (also serialized in Weird Tales) were combined to form a hardcover science fiction novel in 1956 under the title Explorers into Infinity, so, despite the woman-in-peril cover of the magazine, I expect this novella won't be too exploitative. I'm reading this caper at the internet archive, in the April, May and June issues of Weird Tales--you can join me by clicking the links in…