ruggle with invisible things that gripped them. They died when they
headed reluctantly back to the _Niccola_--and detonated two miles from
their parent ship. The skipper's voice came:

"_Mr. Taine! After your next salvo I shall head for the Plumie at full
drive, to cut down the distance and the time they have to work in. Be
ready!_"

The rocket tubes went _crump-crump_ again, with a fifth of a second
interval. The radar showed two tiny specks speeding through space toward
the weaving, shifting speck which was the Plumie.

Outside, in emptiness, there was a filmy haze. It was the rocket-fumes
and explosive gases spreading with incredible speed. It was thin as
gossamer. The Plumie ship undoubtedly spotted the rockets, but it did not
try to turn them. It somehow seized them and deflected them, and darted
past them toward the _Niccola_.

"They see the trick," said Diane, dry-throated. "If they can get in close
enough, they can turn it against us!"

There were noises inside the _Niccola_, now. Taine fairly howled an
order. There were yells of defiance and excitement. There were more of
those inadequate noises as rockets went out--every tube on the starboard
side emptied itself in a series of savage grunts--and the _Niccola's_
magnetronic drive roared at full flux density.

The two ships were less than a mile apart when the _Niccola_ let go her
full double broadside of missiles. And then it seemed that the Plumie
ship was doomed. There were simply too many rockets to be seized and
handled before at least one struck. But there was a new condition. The
Plumie ship weaved and dodged its way through them. The new condition was
that the rockets were just beginning their run. They had not achieved the
terrific velocity they would accumulate in ten miles of no-gravity. They
were new-launched; logy: clumsy: not the streaking, flashing
death-and-destruction they would become with thirty more seconds of
acceleration.

So the Plumie ship dodged them with a skill and daring past belief. With
an incredible agility it got inside them, nearer to the _Niccola_ than
they. And then it hurled itself at the human ship as if bent upon a
suicidal crash which would destroy both ships together. But Baird, in the
radar room, and the skipper in navigation, knew that it would plunge
brilliantly past at the last instant--

And then they knew that it would not. Because, very suddenly and very
abruptly, there was something the matter with the Plu