in minutes—if only our engines keep running!"

He spoke to the Mayor of Steadheim. Almost as he spoke, a tiny tingling began all over his body. As the ship went on, that tingling grew noticeably stronger.

"What—"

"We've no weapons," said Kim, "nor time to devise them. But when we were slaves on the planets we came from we were held enslaved by a circuit that could torture us or paralyze us at the will of our rulers. The disciplinary circuit. Remember?

"I put a disciplinary-circuit generator in that little decoy ship. I took a suggestion from what our friends yonder did to the fighting beams. I tuned the disciplinary circuit to affect any man—but no woman—within its range.

"The generator went on when she grappled the decoy. Every man in it should be helpless. If it stands like that, we'd be paralyzed too if we went near. But not Dona."

The tingling was quite strong. It was painful. Presently it would be excruciating. It would be completely impossible for any man within fifty miles of the decoy space-ship to move a muscle.

"However," said Kim, "I've arranged that. I'd disciplinary-circuit projectors fitted on the Starshine. We turn them on that ship. Automatically, the generator on the decoy will cut off. Our friends will still be helpless, and we can go up and grapple—if our engines keep going!"

He threw a switch. A relay snapped over somewhere and a faint humming noise began. The tingling of Kim's body ceased. The decoy and the enemy space-ship grew large before them. The enemy was still motionless.

Its crew, formerly held immobile by the circuit in the decoy, was now held helpless by the beams from the Starshine. But neither Kim nor the Mayor of Steadheim could enter the enemy ship without becoming paralyzed too.

Dona slipped quietly from the control-room. She came back, clad in a space-suit with the helmet face-plate open.

"All ready, Kim," she said quietly.

Sweat stood out in droplets on Kim's face. The Starshine drifted ever so gently into position alongside the pair of motionless shapes—the one so solid and huge, the other so flimsy and insubstantial. Kim energized the grapples. There was a crushing impact as the Starshine anchored itself to the enemy.

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