t it doesn't work so good yet--it's fuller
of bugs than a Venerian's kitchen. It has blown up five times that I
know of, and has killed twenty-nine men. But when they get it licked
they'll _have something_!"

"When, or if?" asked Bradley, pessimistically.

"I said _when_!" snapped Costigan, his voice cutting. "When the Service
goes after anything they get it, and when they get it it _stays_...." He
broke off abruptly and his voice lost its edge. "Sorry. Didn't mean to
get high, but I think we'll have help, if we can keep our heads up a
while. And it looks good--these are first-class cages they've given us.
All the comforts of home, even to lookout plates. Let's see what's going
on, shall we?"

After some experimenting with the unfamiliar controls Costigan learned
how to operate the Nevian visiray, and upon the plate they saw the Cone
of Battle hurling itself toward Roger's planetoid. They saw the pirate
fleet rush out to do battle with Triplanetary's massed forces, and with
bated breath they watched every maneuver of that epic battle to its
savagely sacrificial end. And that same battle was being watched, also
with the most intense interest, by the Nevians in their control room.

"It is indeed a bloodthirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation
plate. "And it is peculiar--or rather, probably only to be expected from
a race of such a low stage of development--that they employ only
ether-borne forces. Warfare seems universal among primitive
types--indeed, it is not so long ago that our own cities, few in number
though they are, ceased fighting each other and combined against the
semicivilized fishes of the greater deeps."

He fell silent, and for many minutes watched the furious battle between
the two navies of the void. That conflict ended, he watched the
Triplanetary fleet reform its battle cone and rush upon the planetoid.

"Destruction, always destruction," he sighed, adjusting his power
switches. "Since they are bent upon mutual destruction I can see no
purpose in refraining from destroying all of them. We need the iron, and
they are a useless race."

He launched his softening, converting field of dull red energy. Vast as
that field was, it could not encompass the whole fleet, but half of the
lip of the gigantic cone soon disappeared, its component vessels
subsiding into a sluggishly flowing stream of allotropic iron. The
fleet, abandoning its attack upon the planetoid, swung its cone around,
to bring the