through the sighing valves and into the boat deck. A steward came to take charge of the passengers, and Blake hurried up to the gun-deck that had been transformed into the extra-corporeal brain of the doomed Artemis.

Hartnett looked up from his work to grunt at him: "Did you do what I told you to do?"

Blake grinned, "Yes, sir. All the stuff is buried in the storage chambers directly under the pits ... the ones that are used to store the coolants."

"Good enough." He rang for Control. "Have we been sighted yet?"

"No, sir," came Chavez' voice. "But the Cats are gathering thick and fast."

Blake told Hartnett about the mammoth superdreadnaught, and the older man smiled. "We'll see if we can't give them something for their trouble." He turned back to the communicator. "Chavez, see to it that we maintain a mean distance from Oberon of at least 25,000 miles. And have all the screens in place."

"Aye, Sir."

"Artemis is down, Sir," reported Drew.

Hartnett turned to look into the visiplates. The derelict ship had landed nicely on the spaceport near the metallurgical station. He nodded with satisfaction. At least the blast of her tubes hadn't detonated the pile. He looked into a sky plate and saw that she had not landed a minute too soon.

Two Martian cruisers, their black shapes dark against the starry sky, were hanging low over her. Others circled behind them, and higher than all the others, Hartnett could make out the huge shape of the superdreadnaught that Blake had seen. That was the one he wanted!

For perhaps twenty minutes the Martians hung suspiciously over the still landscape of Oberon. Then a cruiser detached itself and began to sink down towards the spaceport on a long, slowly diminishing column of flame.

Hartnett swore. They were going to try and land! That wouldn't do at all. He had to goad them into attacking. He snapped an order to Drew. Only one of the Artemis' proton cannon was connected with the remote control apparatus in the Darkside but Hartnett hoped it would be enough. It had to be.

Taking the gun control himself, he swung the sight so that it pointed at the lowest cruiser. A flash of energy sizzled from the projector, and spattered on the exposed flank of the Cat cruiser throwing 

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