h, where things always,
always, always move steadily. Nobody making his first space-flight could
possibly hit such targets as Joe and the Chief made of themselves. The
man in the enemy rocket was making his first flight. Also, Joe and the
Chief had an initial velocity of 200 miles a minute toward him. The
marksman in the rising rocket hadn't a chance. He fired four more
missiles and tried desperately to home them in. But----

They flashed past his rising course. And then they were quite safe from
his fire, because it would take a very long time indeed for anything he
shot after them to catch up. But their missiles had still to pass
him--and Joe and the Chief could steer them without any concern about
their own safety or anything else but a hit.

They made a hit.

Two of the eight little missiles flashed luridly, almost together, where
the radar-pips showed the rocket to be. Then there were two parts to the
rocket, separating. One was small and one was fairly large. Another
demolition-missile hit the larger section. Still another exploded as
that was going to pieces. The smaller fragment ceased to be important.
The explosions weren't atomic bombs, of course. They were only
demolition-charges. But they demolished the manned rocket admirably.

Brown's voice came in the headphones, still tense. "_You got it! How
about the others?_"

Joe felt a remarkable exhilaration. Later he might think about the poor
devil--there could have been only one--who had been destroyed some 3,700
miles above the surface of the Earth. He might think unhappily of that
man as a victim of hatred rather than as a hater. He might become
extremely uncomfortable about this, but at the moment he felt merely
that he and the Chief had won a startling victory.

"I think," he said, "that you can treat them with silent contempt. They
won't have proximity fuses. Those friends of ours who want so badly to
kill us have found that proximity fuses don't work. Unless one is on a
collision course I don't think you need to do anything about them."

The Chief was muttering to himself in Mohawk, twenty miles away. Joe
said:

"Chief, how about getting back to the Platform?"

The Chief growled. "_My great-grandfather would disown me! Winning a
fight and no scalp to show! Not even counting coup! He'd disown me!_"

But Joe saw his rockets flare, away off against the stars.

The war rockets were very near, now. They still emitted monstrous
jettings of thick whi