Circuit too, only what you gave me has thrown it off. They expect to hold us paralyzed while they cut in with torches and take us. But they mustn't! So I'm going to give you the thing you gave me. If it changed my pattern, it will change yours again, to something they can't guess at." She sobbed again. "Please, Kim! Don't give it back. Go ahead and do what you planned, whatever it is. And if you don't win out, please kill me before you give up. Please! I don't want to be conditioned to do whatever they want in their pleasure-palaces."

She took the tiny sliver of metal in her shaking fingers. She pushed aside the flesh of her hand to put it in his grip. Courageously she released it.

The agonized paralysis left Kim Rendell. But now Dona was a pitiful figure of agony.

Kim groaned. Rage filled him. His anguish and fury was so terrible that he would have destroyed the whole planet, had he been able. But he could not permit her gift, which she had given at the price of such torment, to go without reward. He must struggle on to save them both, even though now he had no hope.

He sprang to the control-board. He stabbed at buttons almost at random, hoping for a response. He'd tried to get the ship into some sort of operating condition, but now there was no time. Frenziedly he attempted to find some combination of controls which would make something, anything happen. He slipped the second bit of hafnium into his mouth to have both hands free. In desperation he ripped the control-board panel loose. He saw clipped wires everywhere behind it. Seizing the dangling ends, he struck them fiercely together. A lurid blue spark leaped. He cried out in triumph, and the morsel of metal Dona had sacrificed to him dropped from his lips.

His muscles contorted and agony filled him.

There was a roaring noise. The Starshine bucked violently. There were crashes and there was a feeling of intolerable weight which he could feel, despite his agony. The ship reeled crazily. It smashed through a wall. It battered into a roof. It spun like a mad thing and went skyward tail-first with Kim Rendell in frozen, helpless torment, holding two cables together with muscles utterly beyond his control.

It went up toward empty space, in which no other vessel was navigating anywhere.

3

 Rays of Destruction

Eventually the 

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