vy liquid which could be stored conveniently in his tanks.

No sooner had the precious fluid been stored away than the detectors
again broke into an uproar. In one direction was an enormous mass of
iron, scarcely detectable; in another a great number of smaller masses;
in a third an isolated mass, comparatively small in size. Space seemed
to be full of iron, and Nerado drove his most powerful beam toward
distant Nevia and sent an exultant message.

"We have found iron--easily obtained and in unthinkable quantity--not in
fractions of milligrams, but in millions upon unmeasured millions of
tons! Send our sister ship here at once!"

"Nerado!" The captain was called to one of the observation plates as
soon as he had opened his key. "I have been investigating the mass of
iron now nearest us, the small one. It is an artificial structure, a
small space-boat, and there are three creatures in it--monstrosities
certainly, but they must possess some intelligence or they could not be
navigating space."

"What? Impossible!" exclaimed the chief explorer. "Probably, then, the
other was--but no matter, we had to have the iron. Bring the boat in
without converting it, so that we may study at our leisure both the
beings and their mechanisms," and Nerado swung his own visiray beam into
the emergency boat, seeing there the armored figures of Clio Marsden and
the two Triplanetary officers.

"They are indeed intelligent," Nerado commented, as he detected and
silenced Costigan's ultra-beam communicator. "Not, however, as
intelligent as I had supposed," he went on, after studying the peculiar
creatures and their tiny space-ship more in detail. "They have immense
stores of iron, yet use it for nothing other than building material.
They make little and inefficient use of atomic energy. They apparently
have a rudimentary knowledge of ultra-waves, but do not use them
intelligently--they cannot neutralize even these ordinary forces we are
now employing. They are of course more intelligent than the lower
ganoids, or even than some of the higher fishes, but by no stretch of
the imagination can they be compared to us. I am quite relieved--I was
afraid that in my haste I might have slain members of a highly developed
race."

The helpless boat, all her forces neutralized, was brought up close to
the immense flying fish. There flaming knives of force sliced her neatly
into sections and the three rigid armored figures, after being bereft of
their e