ce ship with the naked eye when it is 200 miles away.

But he saw something, though for seconds he didn't know what it was.

Now the little ship was 300 miles high and still rising. Joe was dazed
and battered by the vibration of the ship in the graze just past. The
sister space ship hadn't lost speed so fast. It would be traveling
faster. It would be leaving him farther behind every second. It was
rising more sharply. It would rise higher.

Joe stared numbly out of a port, thinking confusedly that his hull would
be dull red on its outer surface, though the heating had been so fast
that the inner surfaces of the plating might still be cold. He saw the
vast area which was the curve of the edge of the world. He saw the
sunlight upon clouds below and glimpses of the surface of the Earth
itself.

And he saw something rising out of the mists at the far horizon. It was
a thread of white vapor. The other rocketship was a speck, a mote,
invisible because of its size and distance. This thread of vapor was
already 100 miles long, and it expanded to a column of whiteness half a
mile across before it seemed to dissipate. It rose and rose, as if
following something which sped upward. It was a rocket trail. The
violence of its writhings proved the fury with which the rocket climbed.

It was on its way to meet the other space ship.

It did. Joe saw the thread of vapor extend and grow until it was higher
than he was. He never saw the other ship, which was too small. But he
saw the burst of flame, bright as the sun itself, which was the
explosion of a proximity fuse bomb. He knew, then, that nothing but
incandescent, radioactive gas remained of the other ship and its crew.

Then he saw the trail of the second rocket. It was rising to meet him.

5

The four of them watched through the ports as the thread of vapor sped
upward. They hated the rocket and the people who had built it. Joe said
between his teeth, "We could spend our landing-rockets and make it
chase us, but it'll have fuel for that!"

The Chief muttered in Mohawk. The words sounded as if they ought to have
blue fire at their edges and smell of sulphur. Mike the midget said
crackling things in his small voice. Haney stared, his eyes burning.

Their ship was a little over 400 miles up, now. The rocket was 100 or
better. The rendezvous would be probably 200 miles ahead and
correspondingly higher. The rocket was accelerating furiously. It had
farther to travel,