The Captain smashed the flat of his hand against the intra-ship phone before him. "WE have the choice! We are fighters! There can't be many of them in the plot—or it would have leaked out. They need the blackness for protection."

"Your logic is sound, Sir," said the calm voice of the Ray Control Officer. "But how will we reach them—how will we fight them?"

The others couldn't see McPartland's broad shoulders sag momentarily at the question. He thought of Almira Denton somewhere in Terra Base, and bunching muscles snapped his shoulders back.

"We'll find out when we land," he answered slowly.

"That'll be soon, man!" McTavish cried suddenly.

They felt the Avenger lurch, and quiver as port and forward rocket tubes thundered. Jon looked upward to where the view screens hung. Those screens should be splashed with a riot of color as the ship changed course and plunged through the jet wash. But nothing was visible to Jon's straining eyes. He heard the Engineer explaining:

"Parek has a mechanical timer rigged with an alarm, to tell him when to correct course."

McPartland thought for a moment of the officer down below, sitting motionless, his hands strapped into fixtures. The empty seconds would be eternities, while he listened to the monotonous ticking of the timer. Then the strident alarm would shatter his nerves, and his fingers search the guide wires for the right controls.

"Can he do it?" Clemens murmured anxiously, as though reading his commander's thought.

"If he can't, there isn't a Navigator in the System who can," the other said tightly.

All of them could feel the deck sloping. The Avenger was heading down. Parek was feeling for Terra Base, balancing the forces of the retarding and propulsion jets, listening to the beat of the timer.

McTavish, too, was feeling for their goal. "Steady, man, steady," he said aloud, his sense attuned to the ship's familiar vibrations. "Landing speed, now," he added.

All of them braced their legs against the increasing tilt of the floor. They rocked on their feet, as Parek poured a richer mixture into the blast tubes.

For a long second the Avenger hung balanced on her jets. Every spaceman aboard her felt his 

 Prev. P 11/23 next