unusual.

Three and a half minutes later, tardy light brought the news that the meteorite had flared in an actinic blaze of incandescent gas.

"Dead hit," said the observer.

Captain Dobrin looked at Roysland with a silent question.

Roysland nodded. "Go ahead. Let's pick out a few more; let's burn asteroids for a while."

They blasted eighteen planetoids into flaming gas in the next three hours. Roysland Dwyn and Kiffer Samm checked their instrument recordings and ran them through the differential analyzer after each firing.

"There's backwash, of course," said Kiffer. He pointed at a line that wavered up and down near the bottom of the graph. "That's the background—stellar noise from the subelectronic radiation of the nearby stars. Now"—he moved his finger along the graph—"this is the harmonic set up by the backwash at the instant of firing of the aJ projectors.

"It looks pretty high on the graph, but that's because the subnuclear reactions inside a star are so slight that they don't generate much background noise. Actually, the backwash from the aJ's couldn't possibly be called dangerous."

Roysland frowned; his heavy, dark brows pulled down, wrinkling his massive forehead. "Well, they obviously didn't do anything to us. At least, if they did, I haven't noticed it."

Kiffer shrugged. "Nothing harmful, anyway. Now, here's some comparison charts I have; the test runs on aJ guns that have been installed in other ships. The wave form is identical; these guns don't react any differently than any other. As far as I can see, there's no reason for these guns to have knocked out the crews of those ships."

Roysland rubbed a finger across his chin and stared at the ceiling. That chin-rubbing gesture was significant to Kiffer; he knew Roysland well enough to know that the big man was thinking. Kiffer kept his mouth shut and waited.

Finally, Roysland snapped his fingers. "Look," he said sharply, "why aren't these things tested the way they're used?"

Kiffer looked puzzled. "The way they're used?" He paused a moment. "Oh, I see what you mean. Why aren't they 

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