* * * *

"Great suffering snakes!" he ejaculated, then stood mute, for the
plate revealed a terrible sight. The entire nose of the gigantic craft
had been sheared off in two immense slices as though clipped off by a
gigantic sword, and even as they stared, fascinated, at the sight, the
severed slices were drifting slowly away. Swinging the view along the
plane of cleavage, Stevens made out a relatively tiny ball of metal,
only fifty feet or so in diameter, at a distance of perhaps a mile.
From this ball there shot a blinding plane of light, and the _Arcturus_
fell apart at the midsection, the lower half separating clean from
the upper portion, which held the passengers. Leaving the upper half
intact, the attacker began slicing the lower, driving half into thin,
disk-shaped sections. As that incandescent plane of destruction made
its first flashing cut through the body of the _Arcturus_, accompanied
by an additional pyrotechnic display of severed and short-circuited
high-tension leads, Stevens and Nadia suddenly found themselves floating
weightless in the air of the room. Still gripping the controls of the
look-out plate, Stevens caught the white-faced girl with one hand, drew
her down beside him, and held her motionless while his keen mind flashed
over all the possibilities of the situation and planned his course
of action.

"They're apparently slicing us pretty evenly, and by the looks of
things, one cut is coming right about here," he explained rapidly, as
he found a flashlight and drew his companion through the door and along
a narrow passage. Soon he opened another door and led her into a tiny
compartment so low that they could not stand upright--a mere cubicle of
steel. Carefully closing the door, he fingered dials upon each of the
walls of the cell, then folded himself up into a comfortable position,
instructed Nadia to do the same, and snapped off the light.

"Please leave it on," the shaken girl asked. "It's so ghastly!"

"We'd better save it, Nadia," he advised, pressing her arm reassuringly,
"it's the only light we've got, and we may need it worse later on--its
life is limited, you know."

"Later on? Do you think we'll need anything--later on?"

"Sure! Of course they may get us, Nadia, but this little tertiary
air-break is a mighty small target for them to hit. And if they miss us,
as I think they will, there's a larger room opening off each wall of
this one--at least one of which wi