"No, man," agreed McTavish who had come up to the control room again. "That cursed devil's mantle is still there!"

The Captain's blue eyes burned into the forward screen. "They're waiting on Terra Base, too," he grated. "But we'd see the break first. The light would come back at the edges, and—" he stumbled over the implication of the next words, "work-in-toward-the-center!"

McTavish's grey eyes blazed suddenly. "In toward the center, man! Right! But the moon isn't at the center!"

Jon was already shouting into the phone: "Observation Officer. Locate the exact center of that area, in relation to this ship, Terra, and Luna.

"Navigation! Get bearings from Observation, and plot torpedo course for dead center."

"This will do it, Sir," shouted the Engineer. "I should have thought of it, Sir, begging your pardon."

"It may be well protected, Sir," Clemens suggested.

Clemens quietly relayed the report from Observation: "Impossible to locate exact center, Sir. Whole area is shifting constantly, unpredictably." He shot a look of glum satisfaction at McTavish, and added: "The approximate center is on the far side of Terra and Luna, Sir."

"A space ship," McPartland said savagely, "flying an erratic course. We don't have much chance finding it with a torpedo."

"The torpedoes can be adjusted for magnetism, Sir," said the Engineer.

McPartland smiled. "If the torpedoes were floating free in space and we can adjust them to do that—the field would attract them to any ship within a Spacial Unit.

"Mister McTavish, I want to sow a hundred of them as magnetic space mines in the approximate center of your devil's mantle."

McTavish released his torpedoes into the blackness. One by one they blasted off. The three in the control room watched their fiery jets disappear into the emptiness of the forward screen.

"They'll go dead and float," McPartland told Clemens, "and explode on contact." He clenched his big hands, and laughed harshly. "If we could only see it!"

"How long, Sir?" Reynolds asked quietly. "Will it be soon enough?"

"It's got to be soon enough," the Captain 

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