n. For the first time since the formation of the Compact,
we had lost a ship, and something like unease crept into our hearts. The
carousal that night had no gaiety, and there was the sound of bereaved
women weeping.

Merril could learn nothing of the _Argonaut's_ fate. It was as though
she had dropped through a hole in the fabric of space itself and
vanished from the ken of men. To me he said: "I fear a new weapon." But
to the rest, he kept his peace and let the work of the Compact continue.
There was nothing else to be done. Our Wall Decade was waning, and when
a man or a Compact outlives the age that gave him or it birth, there is
nothing to do but go forward and meet the new day dawning.

So it was with the Compact. We lived on as we had lived before: looting
and killing and draining the wealth of space into our coffers. But in
the back of our minds a shadow was lurking.

On the next raid, the _Lady_ was lost. I saw it happen, as did Merril.
There was nothing we could do to help her, and she died, spilling men
into the void as she ruptured in her last agony.

It was off Hyperion, whence we had come to loot the trove built there by
the prospectors of the Saturnian Moons. And it was a trap.

The _Arrow_, the _Hound_ and the _Lady_ circled the moonlet, swinging
inward to the attack. It was the _Lady_ who was to put aground the
raiding party, and her valves hung open while men readied the
assault-boats. Our radar screens showed nothing of danger. There was
only the bloated giant in the sky, a ringed monster of yellow gold
against the starry velvet of space.

The _Lady_ dropped her boats, the _Hound_ and the _Arrow_ hovering by to
watch over their sister. And suddenly, the jagged moonscape below
erupted--belching streaks of fire that sought us like probing fingers. I
knew in one single instant of terror that this was the new weapon that
had killed the _Argonaut_, for it sliced into the _Lady's_ flanks as
though the steelite hull were cheese.

She bulged, glowing like an ember. There was a sudden nimbus of snow
about her as her air escaped and froze, and then she rolled into her
death-dance, open from bow to stern, spilling scorched corpses into the
void.

The _Arrow_ and the _Hound_ drove off into space like furies leaving the
spinning body of their sister ship behind, not waiting to watch her
crash down onto the rocky face of Hyperion. And now the five of the
Compact were only three, and again there was the sou