The corridor was empty. Gas and smoke searing his nostrils, the Earthman made his way to the companion. Up he climbed. Emerging on the second level, he stood rigid, stark horror gripping him.

The cages were there. Tier after tier of them stretching into the bowels of the space ship as far as the grey light permitted him to see. In those cages, he knew, were men of his own race: Earth soldiers, prisoners of war.

But over each cage the heavy ceiling plates had been ripped free by the force of the explosion, and where the imprisoned men had been, only twisted bars and sheets of arelium steel were visible. The entire level was a tomb of silence.

Standish choked back a sob. His men all dead! Crushed like rats in a trap.

He crossed to the ladder leading to the third and main level, climbing slowly.

Reaching the crew deck, he rocked backward again with a cry of dismay. Here, too, the fearful destruction was evident on all sides. Uniformed Sirians lay dead in the scuppers. The entire bridge house was a mass of fallen girders and broken metal.

The officers' quarters had been crushed like an eggshell. Only the steering cuddy and control room had been spared. But here, too, Standish found death had not spared the occupants. A pintax bar, ripped free from its rocker arms, had jammed itself like an exploded cartridge into the pilot's skull. All in the control room had died of fumes forced into the chamber when the motors backcharged through the instrument pipes.

From cabin to cabin Standish went from the living quarters of the crew in the forecastle, to the ammunition chamber in the stern. Everywhere he found destruction and death.

And slowly the fact dawned upon him that he alone aboard was alive. He had been spared because he had been imprisoned in the lower hull, and that section of the ship had escaped damage. Slowly he sank onto a settee and tried to reconstruct his thoughts.

A few hours ago as defense engineer for Earth, he had generaled a daring undercover attack against the Sirian's main base at San Francisco. For ten years—since 3010—the war between Earth and Sirius had been going on, with Earth the stage for all battles of the conflict. The cause of the war was long forgotten. Earth people only knew that the Sirians, greedy for more land, had successfully vanquished Mars and Venus and were steadily closing in on terrestrial 

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