oise, bringing his hands together
in an urgent gesture understood by all spacemen.

As the girl staggered to her feet, he whirled and leaped toward the
junction of the cross corridors. He wasted no time in a vain glance
upwards--he knew what Truesdale had done. Only setting off the
torpedoes' rockets in the enclosed turret compartment would have caused
an explosion just severe enough to rupture the ship's skin; if the
warheads had gone off, he never would have known it.

Diving headlong through the opening in the deck, he experienced a
dizzying shift of gravity as he passed through the plane of the main
deck. When he had his bearings again, he scrambled "up" the ladder
toward the belly turret. By the time he got the airtight hatch open, he
was beginning to pant in the thinning air. He pulled himself through at
last, and sealed the compartment.

Phillips sucked in a deep, luxurious breath while he glanced about. This
turret, he saw, was a duplicate of the other. He immediately located the
intercom screen and called the control room. Donna's worried face
appeared. "Where are you?" was her relieved inquiry.

Phillips explained what had happened. "The only thing," he concluded,
"is to try it from here."

"I think they must have spotted the flash," Donna told him. "The
instruments show a shift in their course."

"Blast right at them!" said Phillips. "We might get away with it if
we're quick."

He turned away, leaving the intercom on. A few quick steps took him to
the control panels in the bulkhead. Guided by his lessons in the other
turret, and by faded memories of space school on Earth, he brought up
two of the torpedoes. He checked the radio controls and ran the missiles
into their launching tubes. As he worked, with nervous sweat running
down into his eyes, he was aware of the intermittent jar of rocket
blasts.

"Run 'em down!" he muttered, trying to steady his hand on the controls.

He had a hand at each panel, with the torpedoes poised viciously in the
tubes, when he heard Donna's shout, shrill with excitement, over the
intercom.

Instantly, he launched the missiles. He started the rockets by remote
control, and scanned the screens for a sight of the other vessel.

For a moment, his view was confused by the expanding puff of air; then
that froze, and drifted back to the hull, and he could see the stars.

* * * * *

Donna's voice, strained but coldly controlled, came over th