e was a solemn group of officers and a hundred or so workmen here;
they stopped their fevered labors now to watch the _Cometara_ get
away, first of Earth's ships speeding into space to confront this
nameless enemy. Grantline and I went past them with silent handshakes
and murmured good-bys. I saw the towering figure of Brayley. He raised
an arm for a farewell gesture to us.

We mounted the incline to the _Cometara_. She rested upon her stage, a
great, sleek bronze ship, low and rakish, with pointed ends and a
flattened, arched turtle-back dome of glassite covering the
superstructure and the decks from bow to stern. She lay quiescent,
gleaming in the glow of the departure beacons; but there was an aspect
of latent power upon her.

My ship! My first command! As we went through the opened port of the
domeside and I touched foot upon the deck, I prayed that I might
justify the faith reposed in me.

Men crowded the narrow, covered deck. I saw the space-guns at the deck
pressure-ports, partly assembled. My chief officer, a young fellow
named Drac Davidson, who with his twin brother had been in the
Interplanetary Freight Service, rushed up to me.

"We're ready, sir."

"Very good, Drac."

He hurried me to the turret control room. Grantline instantly had
plunged into details of assembling the weapons.

"Her ports are all closed," said Drac. He spoke calmly, but his thin
face was pale and his dark eyes glowed with excitement. "The interior
pressure is set at fifteen pounds. You can ring us up at once."

No formalities to this departure! With pounding heart I entered the
small circular turret and mounted its tiny spiral stairs to the upper
control room. But as I touched the levers, calmness came to me with
these familiar tasks at which I was skilled.

I slid a central-hull gravity-plate. It went smoothly, perfectly
operated by the magnets. The vessel trembled, lifted; outside the
enclosing dome I could see the dawn-light of the sky and paling
floodlights of the stage. Figures of men out there, made silent
gestures of farewell, dropping slowly beneath our hull as we lifted.

The bow gravity-plates slid into the repulsive-force positions. The
bow lifted. The _Cometara_ responded smoothly. We went up, poised at a
forty-five degree angle. I saw the outer beacons on the stage swing
upward with their warning to passing traffic in the lower lanes.

"Light our bow-beacon, Drac."

We lifted through the lower thousand and two