me miles distant. His last view of Arcot's ship
had been a suddenly contracting ship, one that vanished in infinite
distance, the infinite distance of another space, though he did not know
it.

Arcot turned three powerful heat beams on the Thessian ship, and drove
down toward it, accompanying them with molecular rays. The Thessian
shield stopped the moleculars, but the heat had already destroyed the
eyes of the ship. By some system of magnetic or electrostatic locating
devices, the enemy guns and rays replied, and so successfully that Arcot
was again blinded.

He had again been driving in a line straight toward the enemy, and now
he threw in the entire power of his huge magnetic field-rays. The
induction ray disappeared, and the heat, light and cannons stopped.

"Worked again," grinned Arcot. A new set of eyes was inserted
automatically, and the screen again lighted. The Thessian ship was
spinning end over end toward the ground. It landed with a tremendous
crash. Simultaneously from the rear of the _Ancient Mariner_ came a
terrific crash, an explosion that drove the terrestrian ship forward, as
though a giant hand had pushed it from behind.

The _Ancient Mariner_ spun like a top, facing the direction of the
explosion, though still traveling in the direction it had been pursuing,
but backward now. Behind them the air was a gigantic pool of ionization.
Tremendous fragments of what obviously had been a ship were drifting
down, turning end over end. And those fragments of the wall showed them
to be fully four feet of solid relux.

"Enemy got up behind somehow while the eyes were out, and was ready to
raise merry hell. Somebody blew them up beautifully. Look at the ground
down there--it's red hot. That's from the radiated heat of our recent
encounter. Heat rays reflected, light bombs turned off, heat escaping
from ions--nice little workout--and it didn't seriously bother our
defenses of two-inch relux. Now tell me: what will blow up four-foot
relux?" asked Arcot, looking at the fragments. "It seems to me those
fellows don't need any help from us; they may decline it with thanks."

"But they may be willing to help us," replied Afthen, "and we certainly
need such help."

"I didn't expect to come out alive from that battleship there. It was
luck. If they knew what we had, they could insulate against it in an
hour," added Arcot.

"Let's finish those fellows over there--look!" From the wreck of the
ship they had downed,