any reply to the challenge of the
_Boise_. "Any such, however, will not be allowed inside the planetoid
area after the rest of us return from wiping out that patrol. We attack
in one minute."

"Would not one do better by stopping on?" Baxter, in the quarters of the
American, was in doubt as to the most profitable course to pursue. "I
should leave immediately if I thought that that ship could win; but I do
not fancy that it can, do you?"

"That ship? _One_ Triplanetary ship against _us_?" Penrose laughed
raucously. "Do as you please. I'd go in a minute if I thought that there
was any chance of us losing; but there isn't, so I'm staying. I know
which side _my_ bread's buttered on. Those cops are bluffing, that's
all. Not bluffing exactly, either, because they'll go through with it as
long as they last. Foolish, but it's a way they have--they'll die trying
every time instead of running away, even when they know they're licked
before they start. They don't use good judgment."

"None of you are leaving? Very well, you each know what to do," came
Roger's emotionless voice. The stipulated minute having elapsed, he
advanced a lever and the outlaw cruiser slid quietly into the air.

Toward the poised _Boise_ Roger steered. Within range, he flung out a
weapon new-learned and supposedly irresistible to any ferrous thing or
creature, the red converter-field of the Nevians. For Roger's analytical
detector had stood him in good stead during those frightful minutes in
the course of which the planetoid had borne the brunt of Nerado's
super-human attack; in such good stead that from the records of those
ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct
not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens
employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With
a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated
the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in
such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively
armed and powered? It was just as well for his peace of mind that he had
no inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking
was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical super-ship upon which
the Triplanetary Service had been at work so long; nor that its already
unprecedented armament had been reenforced, thanks to that hated
Costigan, with Roger's own every worthwhile idea, as well as wi