peed to start
with--over 200 miles a minute. No matter how desperately they fired
braking-rockets, they couldn't stop and maneuver around the rising
control-ship. Inevitably they would simply flash past it in the fraction
of an instant. To fire their tiny guided missiles on ahead would be
almost to assure that they would miss. Also, the enemy ship was manned.
It could fight back.

But Joe had been on the receiving end of one attack in space. It wasn't
much experience, but it was more than anybody but he and his own crew
possessed.

"Chief," said Joe softly into his helmet-mike, as if by speaking softly
he could keep from being overheard, "get close enough to me to see what
I do, and do it too. I can't tell you more. Whoever's running this
rocket might know English."

There was a flaring of vapor in space. The Chief was using his
steering-rockets to draw near.

Joe spun his little space wagon about, so that it pointed back in the
direction from which he had come. He had four guided missiles,
demolition type. Very deliberately, he fired the four of them
astern--away from the rising rocket. They were relatively low-speed
missiles, intended to blow up a robot ship that couldn't be hooked onto,
because it was traveling too much faster or slower than the Platform it
was intended to reach. The missiles went away. Then Joe faced about
again in the direction of his prospective target. The Chief fumed--Joe
heard him--but he duplicated Joe's maneuver. He faced his own eccentric
vessel in the direction of its line of flight.

Then his fuming suddenly ceased. Joe's headphones brought his explosive
grunt when he suddenly saw the idea.

"_Joe! I wish you could talk Indian! I could kiss you for this trick!_"

Brown's voice said anxiously: "_I'm going to let that manned rocket have
a couple more shots._"

"Let us get by first," said Joe. "Then maybe you can use them on the
bombs coming up."

He could see the trails of war-rockets on the way out from Earth. They
were infinitesimal threads of vapor. They were the thinnest possible
filaments of gossamer white. But they enlarged as they rose. They were
climbing at better than two miles per second, now, and still increasing
their speed.

But the arena in which this conflict took place was so vast that
everything seemed to take place in slow motion. There was time to reason
out not only the method of attack from Earth, but the excuse for it. If
the Platform vanished from space,