ught them.

The Lawlor drive began to burble. He cut it off. He sat gloomily in the
control room, occasionally glancing at the nearing expanse of rushing
mottled surface presented by the now-nearby planet. Its attraction bent
the path of the yacht. It was now a parabolic curve.

Presently the surface diminished a little. The yacht was increasing its
distance from it. Hoddan used the telescope. He searched the space ahead
with full-width field. He found the liner. It rose steadily. The grid
still thrust it upward with an even, continuous acceleration. It had to
be not less than forty thousand miles out before it could take to
overdrive. But at that distance it would have an outward velocity which
would take it on out indefinitely. At ten thousand miles, certainly, the
grid-fields would let go.

They did. Hoddan could tell because the liner had been pointed base down
toward the planet when the force fields picked it up. Now it wabbled
slightly. It was free. It was no longer held solidly. From now on it
floated up on momentum.

Hoddan nibbled at his fingernails. There was nothing to be done for
forty minutes more. Presently there was nothing to be done for thirty.
For twenty. Ten. Five. Three. Two--

The liner was barely twenty miles away when Hoddan fired his rockets.
They made a colossal cloud of vapor in emptiness. The yacht stirred
faintly, shifted deftly, lost just a suitable amount of velocity--which
now was nearly straight up from the planet--and moved with precision and
directness toward the liner. Hoddan stirred his controls and swung the
whole small ship. Here, obviously, he could not use the space-drive for
its proper purpose. But a switch cut out certain elements of the Lawlor
unit and cut in those others which made the modified drive-unit into a
ball lightning projector.

A flaming speck of pure incandescence sped from the yacht through
emptiness. It would miss-- No. Hoddan swerved it. It struck the liner's
hull. It would momentarily paralyze every bit of electric equipment in
the ship. It would definitely not go unnoticed.

"Calling liner," said Hoddan painfully into a microphone. "Calling
liner! We are pirates, attacking your ship. You have ten seconds to get
into your lifeboats or we will hull you!"

He settled back, again nibbling at his fingernails. He was acutely
disturbed. At the end of ten seconds the distance between the two ships
was perceptibly less.

He flung a second ball lightning bolt