amms, and calmly and clearly he narrated everything that had
just happened. He continued his crisp report, neglecting not the
smallest detail, while their tiny craft was drawn inexorably toward a
redly impermeable veil; continued it until their lifeboat, still intact,
shot through that veil and he found himself unable to move. He was
conscious, he was breathing normally, his heart was beating; but not a
voluntary muscle would obey his will!

CHAPTER 9

FLEET AGAINST PLANETOID

One of the newest and fleetest of the patrol vessels of the Triplanetary
League, the heavy cruiser _Chicago_ of the North American Division of
the Tellurian Contingent, plunged stolidly through interplanetary
vacuum. For five long weeks she had patrolled her allotted volume of
space. In another week she would report back to the city whose name she
bore, where her space-weary crew, worn by their long "tour" in the
awesomely oppressive depths of the limitless void, would enjoy to the
full their fortnight of refreshing planetary leave.

She was performing certain routine tasks--charting meteorites, watching
for derelicts and other obstructions to navigation, checking in
constantly with all scheduled space-ships in case of need, and so
on--but primarily she was a warship. She was a mighty engine of
destruction, hunting for the unauthorized vessels of whatever power or
planet it was that had not only defied the Triplanetary League, but was
evidently attempting to overthrow it; attempting to plunge the Three
Planets back into the ghastly sink of bloodshed and destruction from
which they had so recently emerged. Every space-ship within range of her
powerful detectors was represented by two brilliant, slowly-moving
points of light; one upon a greater micrometer screen, the other in the
"tank," the immense, three-dimensional, minutely cubed model of the
entire Solar System.

A brilliantly intense red light flared upon a panel and a bell clanged
brazenly the furious signals of the sector alarm. Simultaneously a
speaker roared forth its message of a ship in dire peril.

"Sector alarm! N.A.T. _Hyperion_ gassed with Vee-Two. Nothing detectable
in space, but...."

The half-uttered message was drowned out in a crackling roar of
meaningless noise, the orderly signals of the bell became a hideous
clamor, and the two points of light which had marked the location of the
liner disappeared in widely spreading flashes of the same high-powered
interfere