r of the conquistadors.

Now they knew that though the Sun-tappers' weapons were different and
indeed advanced beyond Earthly technology, they themselves were not
without resources equally deadly to the foe.

After the memory of the H-bomb's powers had been finally absorbed, the
crew's activities began to indicate that the ship was coming into the
crucial phase of its journey. Haines and Boulton were going over the
list of military supplies with sharp, calculating eyes and slight grins
at the thought of retribution to come. Ferrati was overhauling the
rocket planes and land traveling devices, making them shipshape.

Russell Clyde and Burl surveyed the sky, anxious to be the first to spot
what they hoped would be the limping body of the battered and fleeing
dumbbell ship, a little atingle at the hope of spotting another such
ship--feeling now almost like the hunting dog that has finally spotted
the fox.

Lockhart himself reflected this mood of growing excitement. He prowled
the ship, examining the mighty purring engines, querying Caton, Shea and
Detmar as to how it could better its performance, how fast it could be
made to shift speed and directions. He studied the orbits and locations
of the remaining planets.

"Uranus is not too far off our path to Pluto," he announced one day.
"We'll make it in time to wipe out their plant there. But Neptune, whose
orbit is between those of Uranus and Pluto, is away off our track, a
third of the way around the Sun. We're going to skip it, hit directly
for Pluto and their main base--the end of their line. I don't want to
give them too much time to make repairs or to get any reinforcements. I
think they're limited in numbers--and we ought to slam them while they
still are."

There was no dissent at this. And as the days rolled past, the men of
the _Magellan_ began to chafe in their repressed desire to finish the
matter. At last Uranus came into sight--a large globe, very much like
Saturn and Jupiter in that it was of low density and great dimensions.
Roughly, sixty-four times the size of Earth, its density was barely
above that of water and it probably had no solid surface to speak of. An
inhospitable mass of unbreathable gases, at temperatures fantastically
lower than the freezing point of water.

As they drew close to the planet, they could see that it also was
banded, pale green bands alternating with lighter ones--indicating that
some sections of its atmospheric belt moved f