Kandoris." He paused and looked at both men in turn. "If this keeps up," he said, "they'll have us whipped. It's your job to keep them from doing that. Now, you've got several trails to follow. Follow them, and get some answers; that's all."

His hand touched the arm rest of his chair, and abruptly the image dissolved into transparent air.

Bilford looked at Roysland. "I don't like the way he keeps needling people," he said. "It gets under my skin."

Roysland stood up. "He thinks that's the best way to get things done. Maybe it is; I really don't know. I do agree with him in one respect: we have to do something—what, I don't know, but something.

"We've been fighting the Enlissa for eighteen years. Up until last year, when we invented the aJ gun, there hadn't been an improvement on either side; they were winning because they had more ships.

"Then we get the aJ gun functioning, and use it against them; and when we do, it turns out that they have an even better weapon. I know what they mean when they say war is hell."

He stopped and looked at the captain. "Well, let's get on with it; I want to ask him a few questions."

Eighteen years of fighting hadn't seriously damaged either side, insofar as actual loss of life was concerned. Men in ships had been killed, of course, but no civilian had yet lost his life as a direct result of the Enlissa-Human war. The Enlissa hadn't gotten in close enough to occupied planets—yet.

But, until a year ago, it had seemed inevitable that they would. The screen of ships that ranged around the periphery of the human-inhabited section of the galaxy was getting thinner all the time. The Enlissa had more ships, and, rather than make a direct attack, they seemed to prefer to punch at the screen, weakening it steadily.

But the Enlissa had underestimated human ingenuity. Both sides had been relying on the ultralight torpedoes to knock each other out of the sky, and humanity had realized that they had to have something better. So they had come up with the aJ projector. If matter can be projected through the no-space of ultralight velocities, why not energy?

The result was as devastating a heat beam as any dreamer could logically expect; all the energy of a nuclear reaction focused along a narrow locus of no-space toward the enemy ship. Even a shielded hull gives under 

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