ocket, on the right,
above and below the great water tanks that fed the ion-rockets, behind
the rockets themselves. The tungsten metal walls were cold and gray
under the ship lights; the hunched bulks of the apparatus crowded the
tiny room. Gigantic racked accumulators huddled in the corners. Martin
and Garnet swung into position in the fighting-tanks just ahead of the
power rooms; Canning slid rapidly through the engine room, oozed through
a tiny door, and took up his position in the stern-chamber, seated
half-over the great ion-rocket sheath.

"Ready in positions, Captain Kendall," called the war-pilot as the
little green lights appeared on his board.

"Test discharges on maximum," ordered Kendall. He turned to Cole. "You
start the automatic key?"

"Right, Captain."

"All shipshape?"

"Right as can be. Accumulators at thirty-seven per cent, thanks to the
loaf out here. They ought to pick up our signal back on Jupiter, he's
nearest now. The station on Europa will get it."

"Talbot--we are only to investigate if the ship is as reported. Have you
seen any signs of her?"

"No sir, and the signals are blank."

"I'll work from here." Kendall took his position at the commanding
control. Cole made way for him, and moved to the power board. One by one
he tested the automatic doors, the pressure bulkheads. Kendall watched
the instruments as one after another of the weapons were tested on
momentary full discharge--titanic flames of five million volt protons.
Then the ship thudded to the chatter of the Garnell rifles.

* * * * *

Tensely the men watched the planet ahead, white, yet barely visible in
the weak sunlight so far out. It was swimming slowly nearer as the tiny
ship gathered speed.

Kendall cast a glance over his detector-instruments. The radio network
was undisturbed, the magnetic and electric fields recognized only the
slight disturbances occasioned by the planet itself. There was nothing,
noth--

Five hundred miles away, a gigantic ship came into instantaneous being.
Simultaneously, and instantaneously, the various detector systems howled
their warnings. Kendall gasped as the thing appeared on his view screen,
with the scale-lines below. The scale must be cock-eyed. They said the
ship was fifteen hundred feet in diameter, and two thousand long!

"Retreat," ordered Kendall, "at maximum acceleration."

Talbot was already acting. The gyroscopes hummed in their castings, an