wo-and-a-half minutes. There will be no further count-down. In thirty
seconds we fire missiles into government buildings, in retaliation for
an attempt to assassinate us with time-bombs. The next sound you hear
will be our missiles arriving." He cut back to the grid-control
building. "Fire all charges and report to the ship."

Almost instantly curt, crisp reports sounded nearby. The landing-party
came smartly back to the airlock, while explosions continued in the
building they'd left.

"Launcher-tubes train on targets," Bors commanded. He pressed another
button. "Rocket-room, make ready for lift." Back to the launcher-tube
communicator. "Fire missiles one, two, three, four, five, six."

There were boomings, which rose to bellowings as devastation tore away
from the _Isis's_ launching-tubes. Bors said irritably to the
rocket-room:

"Take her up!"

And then the ship lifted on her rockets--they were not solely for
emergency use, as on cargo-ships--and rushed toward the sky. As the ship
mounted on its column of writhing smoke, other smoky columns spouted up.
Six of them. But they were limited. They went up two thousand feet and
then tended to mushroom. Bits of debris went higher and spread more
widely, and for a time there were fragments of buildings and their
contents flying wildly about.

But the ship went straight upward. The city and the open country beyond
it shrank swiftly. The spouted smokes of explosions in the city were
left behind. Mountains appeared at one horizon and a sea at another.
Then the vast expanse of the planet suddenly acquired a curved edge, and
the ship again went up and up--while the sky turned dark and some stars
appeared in futile competition with the sun--and the surface of Tralee
became visibly the near side of an enormous globe.

Then the planet became plainly what it was, a great ball floating in
space, one-half of it brilliant in the sunshine and one part of it
bathed in night.

Bors put on the solar-system drive and changed course. A voice came
through:

"_Calling pirate ship ... calling pirate ship.... Space yacht_ Sylva
_calling pirate ship...._"

Bors growled into a microphone, "What the devil are you doing in this
place. What's happened?"

Gwenlyn's voice, bland and amused. "_Nothing happened. But we've got
some news for you. Make rendezvous at the fourth planet?_"

Bors swore again. That was where he was to meet the cargo-ship captured
and sent aloft, supposedly destroye