slowly by. Then he walked over to where Kiffer and the ship's officers were standing, near the main control area.

"Captain Dobrin," he said, "we've got our instruments set up; we'd like to find some targets to test-fire at." He paused for a moment and looked at the officer. "You know what we're up against, don't you?"

Captain Dobrin was a lean, graying, grim-faced man who looked as though the last time he had smiled was in his mother's arms. "I know what our chances are; slightly worse than those of a fighting ship engaging the enemy, as I figure it. Besides, I figure that if you're willing to risk your neck—or your mind—I'll take the same chances with the ship." He stopped and looked at the screen, then looked straight up, pointing his finger through the transparent dome of the nose. "We'll head toward that star, there; it's a triple sun, and there's usually plenty of debris floating around in the vicinity of a system like that."

Roysland watched as the ship approached the triple star system. At first it was only a bright point of light. Then, gradually, it separated into two lights, one several times as bright as the other. Finally, the brighter of the two separated into two parts. The three suns stood at the points of an elongated isosceles triangle.

As they neared the trio, the captain ordered the no-space generator cut, and the ship dropped out of drive. Instead of having a velocity measured in light-hours per second, the ship dropped suddenly to miles per second.

"Electromagnetic detectors on," said the Fire Control Officer.

A ship traveling above the velocity of light cannot detect a material body unless there is subetheric radiation coming from the detected body. A star, naturally, can be detected. At those velocities, a star's subetheric radiation can be seen as ordinary light. But there is no way to detect a nonradiating body; in order to fire at a target, it's necessary to cut out the drive and use ordinary detectors to find a nonradiating body such as a meteorite.

"Target at forty million miles," said an observer.

"Track and fire," said the fire control officer.

The robot-controlled aJ projectors swiveled in their mounts, found the mass of nickel-iron that was their target, and hummed softly. Then they clicked.

That was all. Roysland neither saw nor felt anything 

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