instant of unspeakable torment. Dona—now fumbling desperately through unfamiliar passageways amid contorted, glaring figures—would be at the tender mercy of the crew.

And when the three of them were dead the drive of the Starshine would be at the disposal of the Empire of Greater Sinab if they only chose to look at it. The beastly scheme of conquest would spread and spread and spread throughout the galaxy and enslave all women—and murder all human men not parties to the criminality.

The lights flickered again. They almost died and on the Starshine, Kim clenched his hands in absolute despair. On the enemy warship the frozen, immobile figures of the crew made agonized raging movements.

But the engine caught fugitively once more, and Dona worked desperately and then fled toward the airlock with her booty while the disciplinary circuit field which froze the Sinabian crew wavered, and tightened, and wavered once more.

And died!

Dona dragged open the enemy's inner airlock door as a howl rose behind her. She flung open the outer as murderous projectors warmed. She clattered along the outer hull of the Sinabian ship on her magnetic shoes, and saw the Starshine drifting helplessly away, even the grapples powerless to hold the two bodies together.

At that sight, Dona gasped. She leaped desperately, with star-filled nothingness above and below and on every hand. She caught the Starshine's airlock door.

And Kim cut out the disciplinary-circuit beams and the flow of current to the grapples and, with a complete absence of hope, pressed the transmitter-drive button. He had no shred of belief that it would work.

But it did. The equalizer-batteries from the engines gave out one last surge of feeble power—and were dead. But that was enough, since nothing else drew current at all. The stars reeled.

This was a test.

Almost anything could happen. Kim held his breath, anxiously watching and waiting for the worst, his senses attuned to the delicate mechanisms about him.

And then, slowly, the reaction was fully determined, and he smiled.

CHAPTER V

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