away the lifeboat and the cable. Leave us without an electromagnet—right back where we started from."

Commander Jon McPartland stared with hard blue eyes into his screen. He watched a dot growing into a sphere, and, anticipating the words of Lieutenant-Commander Clemens, ordered:

"Have Lieutenant Parek compute their speed and course."

Clemens, with a look of gloomy reproach at not having been allowed to report, bent to the intra-ship phone. Before he could speak, he straightened, and turned to relay the information coming through his headphones:

"Navigation Officer reports course head on, sir. Speed fifty Spatial Units."

"Thank you." The Commander looked at his Engineer. "All in readiness, Mister McTavish?"

"All in readiness, sir," replied the lanky engineer, his grey eyes twinkling as he added: "They're using an electron ray, and our ship is negative—but this'll be a positive jolt to the enemy, begging your pardon, sir!"

McPartland smiled, the tense muscles along his jaw relaxing for the first time in hours. Clemens coughed and turned aside, bringing a hand up over his mouth.

This effort to preserve his reputation was needed only for a moment. He straightened, adjusting his headphones, and reported:

"Enemy ship changing course, sir, swinging aside."

The Commander glanced quickly at the screen, disbelief flicking momentarily over his square features. He leaped to the intra-phone, snatching the headphones from the Lieutenant-Commander.

"Mister Parek," he ordered, "swing with that ship. We must get in close—quickly!" Aside to McTavish, he added: "I hope the cable to that spaceboat holds when it snaps around on this turn."

"It will hold, sir," the Engineer assured him. "But we'll lose some speed by the drag—only until we re-accelerate, sir."

McPartland tossed the headphones back to Clemens, left the intra-phone, and went back to his screen. For the next few minutes he watched the alien silver sphere, flashing and glinting in the starlight.

Jon McPartland whispered, half to himself: "The cunning devils! They know something's up when a beaten ship comes back to fight again."

"Begging your pardon, sir," said Reynolds, the Ray Control Officer, in his quiet manner. "They 

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