us, it won't be bad--but I figure that if there's only one,
we're lucky."

* * * * *

Stevens' fears were only too well grounded, for during the "evening" of
the following day, while he was carefully scanning the heavens for some
sign of enemy craft, the alarm bell over his head burst into its brazen
clamor. Instantly he shot out the detectors and ultra-lights and saw not
one, but six of the deadly globes--almost upon them, at point-blank
range! One was already playing a beam of force upon the _Forlorn Hope_,
and the other five went into action immediately upon feeling the
detector impulses and perceiving that the weapon of their sister ship
had encountered an unusual resistance in the material of that peculiarly
mirrored wedge. As those terrific forces struck her, the terrestrial
cruiser became a vast pyrotechnic set piece, a dazzling fountain of
coruscant brilliance: for the mirror held. The enemy beams shot back
upon themselves and rebounded in all directions, in the same spectacular
exhibition of frenzied incandescence which had marked the resistance of
the Titanian sphere to a similar attack.

But Stevens was not idle. In the instant of launching his detectors,
as fast as he could work the trips, four of the frightful nitrogen
bombs of Titan--all that he could handle at once--shot out into space,
their rocket-tubes flaring viciously. The enemy detectors of course
located the flying torpedoes immediately, but, contemptuous of material
projectiles, the spheres made no attempt to dodge, but merely lashed out
upon them with their ravening rays. So close was the range that they
had no time to avoid the radio-directed bombs after discovering that
their beams were useless against the unknown protective covering of
those mirrored shells. There were four practically simultaneous
detonations--silent, but terrific explosions as the pent-up internal
energy of solid pentavalent nitrogen was instantaneously released--and
the four insensately murderous spheres disappeared into jagged fragments
of wreckage, flying wildly away from the centers of explosion. One great
mass of riven and twisted metal was blown directly upon the fifth globe,
and Nadia stared in horrified fascination at the silent crash as the
entire side of the ship crumpled inward like a shell of cardboard under
the awful impact. That vessel was probably out of action, but Stevens
was taking no chances. As soon as he had clamped a pa