rather think they'd have brought the engineers and at least an advance working party of settlers with them the second trip in. But they are still short of available ships—they're still not aware of what we may be going to do."

"Why is that?" asked Burl.

Haines looked thoughtful. "This is conjecture. But if they planted any spies among our Earth people, there's been no contact, because otherwise they'd have known we could track and crack their base as soon as it started. This means that they still haven't had scouting ships to spare for checking up on what they did the first time. No checkup means no spare personnel to do the checking. They just assumed that we hadn't caught on, and started operations by remote control as they had originally planned."

"And that also may mean that these people are hard up," said Ferrati. "Wherever they came from, their civilization has been great, but it's gone to seed. They plan to seize another solar system, start over again, and they haven't the manpower to do an adequate job—and they haven't the abundance of material needed to set up simple check and guard stations, such as any major Earth nation would have the sense to do."

"Why, that means we've got a fighting chance to lick 'em," said Burl joyfully. "I kept thinking we'd run into more than we could cope with."

"We've got a fighting chance, all right," said Haines. "We may be able to rip up their Sun-tap layouts, but what if we meet the main explorer ship itself? Anybody who can cross interstellar space and warp the power of the Sun, can probably outshoot, outrun, and outfight us. Let's hope we don't meet them until we've done our work."

On this note the little discussion broke up as the gong rang for the next watch.

It made sense to Burl. If the Magellan could just operate fast enough, keep on the jump, they'd save the day. But—and he realized that nobody had mentioned it aloud—it also followed that the enemy—however small its group—was still in the solar system somewhere and would certainly be starting to take action very soon now.

The time came when the ship was to start slowing, to prepare itself for the meeting with Venus. Burl saw the hour and minute approach and watched Lockhart take the controls and set the new readings. The steady hum of the generators—a vibration that had become a constant feature of the ship—altered, and for everyone it was a relief. Their minds had become 

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