horrible power available for the landing and launching of ships. And, focused upon it, the force-fields of the grid could control it absolutely for a hundred thousand miles.

Calhoun swerved, ever so slightly. His own velocity had reached miles per second, but the formless mass following him was traveling at tens. It would not matter what such a hurtling missile was. At such a velocity it would not strike like a mass, but like a meteor-shower, flaring into incandescence when it touched and vaporizing the Med ship with itself in the flame of impact.

But the grid would have to let go before it hit. There was monstrous stored power in the ship's Duhanne cells. If so much raw energy were released into anything on which a force-field was focused, it would destroy the source of the field. The grid could control its battering-ram until the very last fraction of a second, but then it must release—and its operator knew it.

Calhoun swung his ship frantically.

The mass of speeding planet-matter raced past no more than hundreds of yards away. It was released. It would go on through empty space for months or years—perhaps forever.

Calhoun swung back to his upward course. Now he sent raging commands before him:

"Pull back that missile! You can't land a bomb on Canis! There are people there! You can't drop a bomb on Canis!"

There was no answer. He raged again:

"Med ship calling Phaedra fleet! There's disease on Canis! Your children and grandchildren are stricken! You can't fight your way to help them! You can't blast your way to sickbeds! You've got to negotiate! You've got to compromise! You've got to make a bargain or you and they together—"

A snarling voice from the ground said spitefully:

"Never mind, little Med man! Let 'em try to land! Let 'em try to take over and boss us! We listened to them long enough! Let 'em try to land and see what happens! We've got their fleet spotted! We'll take care of them!"

Then the growling tones Calhoun had come to associate with Phaedra:

"You keep out of the way, Med Ship. If our young children are sick, we're going to them! We're just beyond the area in which no drive will work. When the grid has been blasted our landing ship will go down and we'll come in! Our 

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