The sky screamed light, beneath them. The Sun, its atoms ceaselessly riven and then reborn, shrieked raving energy, magnetism, electricity, light, radiant heat, a rage across the heavens, a cosmic storm flinging up wild plumes and spindrift of violet calcium, of yellow sodium, of blue and red and purple.

Over it, as over a limitless fiery ocean, hung the shoal of silver ships. Tossed and twitched by storms of radiation, wrenched by the mighty claws of the titan magnetic field, scorched by the blaze of the star, they fought to hold position. Their formation wavered, sagged, re-formed and wavered again, and still they held together.

On the bridge of the Starsong, clutching a stanchion as the deck heeled and shuddered under him, Kirk stood with Garstang watching the screens.

"Not a sign!" said Garstang in his ear. "And we can't sit up here forever!"

The rim of the Asteroid Belt showed on one screen, a jagged wheeling of rock fragments, dust and pebbles and little naked worlds, black on their shadow-sides flashing like heliographs where they caught the light. Beyond them was space, very deep, very dark, very empty, looking toward Orion and his pendant sword.

In that deep emptiness out there, five ships moved slowly. Earth ships, behaving like a normal patrol. The remainder of Earth's fleet was hidden among the asteroids. Even the searching rays that fed the screen could not see them.

Suddenly Garstang caught Kirk's shoulder. "There!" he said. He leaned forward and pointed his blunt forefinger at the screen.

Out of the depths toward the star Saiph came a swarm of tiny flecks that might have been nothing more than bits of cosmic drift, except that they moved together and very fast. They swept in toward the Solar System with a gathering rush, growing, picking up the sunlight on their polished sides. Two full squadrons of Solleremos' fleet, on planetary approach.

The five Earth ships out there wheeled in perfect formation and went on out to meet them.

Kirk's mouth was dry. Runnels of sweat crept down his temples, down his body. The palms of his hands were clammy.

"Screen's gone again," he said, and swore.

The screens blazed useless white, even the powerful rays that served them wrenched and cut by an outburst of solar electricity. Then they cleared again.

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