When I first saw it, I thought it was ramming us!"

"It's a gadget," said Kim abstractedly. His eyes were on the indicator of one of the detectors. The needle was definitely away from its point of rest. "There's something moving toward us. My guess is that it's a warship with fighting-beams—and hafnium and fuel."

CHAPTER IV

Encounter in the Void

The Mayor of Steadheim looked from one to the other of them. Dona was pale. She looked full of dread. Kim's lips were twisted wryly, but his eyes were intent on the dial. The mayor opened his mouth, and closed it, then spoke wrathfully.

"I don't understand all this! Where'd that other ship come from?"

"It isn't a ship," said Kim, watching the dial that told of the approach of something that could only be an enemy—and it had been a matter of faith that only the Starshine roamed the spaceways. "I got it made back on Terranova.

"We took a big reel of metal spring-wire, and wound it round and round a shape like that of the Starshine. When it was in place we annealed and tempered it so it would always resume that shape. And then we wound it back on its reel. I just dumped it out in space from a special lock astern.

"It began to unroll, and of course to go back to the form it had been tempered in. Here, with no gravity to distort it, it went perfectly back into shape. Close-to, of course, you can see it's only a shell and a thin one. But a few miles away it would fool you."

The needle on the detector-dial crept over and over. Kim wet his lips. Dona's face was white.

Then Kim winced and the Mayor of Steadheim roared furiously and the universe without the view-ports swayed and dissolved into something else. Alarm-gongs rang and the Starshine was in a brand-new place, with a blue-white giant sun and a dwarf companion visible nearby. The ringed sun Khiv had vanished.

"K-kim!" said Dona, choking.

"I'm quite all right," he told her. But he wiped sweat off his face. "Those beams aren't pleasant, no matter how short the feeling is."

He turned back to the controls. The faint whine of the gyros began. The Starshine began to turn about. Kim applied power. But it took a long time for the ship's nose to be turned 

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