squadron of Sinabian warships had headed out for Ades as a part of the program of expansion of the empire. It had lifted from Sinab Two—then the thriving, comfortable capital of the empire—and gone into overdrive on its mission.

The distance to be covered was something like thirty light-years. Overdrive gave a speed two hundred times that of light, which was very high speed indeed, and had sufficed for the conquest of a galaxy, in the days when the human race was rising.

But even thirty light-years at that rate required six weeks of journeying in the stressed space of overdrive. During those six weeks, of course, there could be no communication with home base.

So the squadron bound for Ades had sped on all unknowing and unconscious while Khiv Five was beamed and all its men killed and while the Starshine had essayed a return journey from the Second Galaxy and then sped crazily to universes beyond men's imagining and returned, and while the midget fleet of Ades wrecked the empire in whose service the travelers set out to do murder.

The journeying squadron—every ship wrapped in the utter unapproachability of faster-than-light travel—was oblivious to all that had occurred. Its separate ships came out of overdrive some forty million miles from the solitary planet Ades, lonelily circling its remote small sun.

The warships of Sinab had an easier task in keeping together on overdrive than ships of the Starshine class on transmitter-drive, but even so they went back to normal space forty million miles from their destination—two second's journey on overdrive—to group and take final counsel.

Kim Rendell in the Starshine flashed back from the last of the twenty planets of Sinab as six monster ships emerged from seeming nothingness. The Starshine's detectors flicked over to the "Danger" signal-strength.

Alarm-gongs clanged violently. The little ship hurtled past a monster at a bare two-hundred miles distance, and there was another giant a thousand miles off, and two others and a fifth and sixth....

The six ships drew together into battle formation. Their detectors, too, showed the Starshine. More, as other midgets flicked into being, returning from their raid upon the Empire, they also registered upon the detector-screens of the battle-fleet.

The fighter-beams of the ships flared into deadliness. They were astounded, no doubt, by the 

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