themselves. They won't," he added grimly, "have to come in."

Kirk nodded. "So we'll fool them. We won't go into the Throat either."

Garstang stood silent for a moment. Then he said, "I was hoping you wouldn't think of that."

"Have you a better idea? Or even a worse one?"

"No." Garstang took a deep breath and spoke into the communicator. "New course, north and zenith, forty degrees. We're running the nebula. On full autopilot. If anyone wants to pray, go ahead."

The Starsong shot upward, plunging high into an area so choked with stellar radiance that it made the Dragon's Throat seem like empty space. The manual control-banks were dark and dead. From the calc-room back of the bridge a new sound came, different from the normal occasional outbursts of chattering. This was a steady sound, a sound of authority, the voice of the Starsong speaking. She was flying herself now. The men aboard, Captain and Commander, able spaceman and ensign, were her charges, dependent on her wisdom and her radar vision and her strength. There was nothing they could do but wait.

The Starsong spiralled higher, her radar system guiding her on a twisting path between the clotted stars. Then Kirk saw a great glowing edge slide onto the screen and grow into a vastness of dust and cosmic drift illumined by the half-smothered stars it webbed.

The Orionid cruisers had altered course and were coming after them. But the Starsong was already skimming through glowing arms that reached like misty tentacles searching for other stars to trap and feed upon. Once in the cloud, she would be screened from the cruiser's radar beams by the most effective scrambling device in space, the nebula itself.

Effective. Yes. But potentially as deadly as Orionid warheads. The only difference was that with the nebula you had a chance. Against three cruisers you had none.

Kirk strapped himself into the recoil chair beside Garstang. Nothing moved now within the ship. The frail, breakable organism of breath and heart and bone were encased in protective webs. This was the hour of the ship, the hour of steel and flame and the racing electron, faster than thought.

The Starsong spoke to herself in the calc-room, and plunged headlong into the cloud.

CHAPTER III

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