Kim snapped orders and his squadron came swarming after him. The direction of the message was clear. It had come from a point a bare two thousand miles above the surface of Khiv Five and with coordinates which made its location easy.

It was too close for the use of transmitter-drive, of course. Even overdrive at two hundred light-speeds was out of the question. On normal drive the little ships—bare specks in space—spread out and out. Their battle tactics had been agreed upon. They wove and darted erratically.

They had projectors of the disciplinary-circuit field, which would paralyze any man they struck with sufficient intensity. But that was all—for the good and sufficient reason that such fields could be tested upon grimly resolute volunteers and adjusted to the utmost of efficiency.

On the prison world of Ades, to which criminals were sent from all over the galaxy, there was no legal murder. Killing fighting-beams could not be calibrated. There were no available victims.

The detectors picked up a single considerable mass. Electron telescopes focussed upon it. Kim's lips tensed. He saw a giant war-craft, squat and ungainly—with no air-resistance in space there is no point in streamlining a space-ship—and with the look of a mass of crammed generators of deadly beams.

It turned slowly in its flight. It was not one space-ship, but two—two giant ships grappled together. It turned further and there was a shimmering, unsubstantial tiny shape clutched to one....

"The dickens!" said Kim bitterly. He called into the space-phones; "Kim Rendell speaking! Don't attack! Those ships aren't driving, they're falling! They'll smash on Khiv Five and we can't do anything about it. Keep at least fifty miles away!"

A wheezing voice said furiously from the communicator,

"They tricked me! I went for 'em, and the transmitter-drive went on! I'll get 'em this time!"

Kim barked at the Mayor of Steadheim, even as in the field of the electron telescope he saw a tiny mote of a space-ship charge valorously at the monsters. It plunged toward them—and vanished.

Dona spoke breathlessly.

"But what happened, Kim?"

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