Thunder in the Void by Henry Kuttner — Read

Foreword

Late in the Twentieth Century Man, for the first time, burst through the invisible barrier that had always kept him chained to his planet. A new and almost uncharted ocean lay before him, its vastness illimitable, its mysteries as yet unexplored. Magellan, Columbus, Leif Ericsson -- these primitives expected great wonders as the searoads opened before the prows of their ships. But the first spacemen thought -- mistakenly, as it proved -- that the airless void between the worlds could hold little unknown to them.