met-projectiles and the
whirling discs; airless hulks, and scattered fragments which no longer
resembled a ship at all but only a hull plate or a torn segment of
dome. And little drifting blobs, the survivors in pressure suits who
had leaped from the wreckage; little blobs ignored, whirled away or
drawn forward as by chance the sweeping gravity-beams fell upon them;
tiny derelicts, floating stormtossed until the Moon's attraction
caught and pulled them down, or a whirling disc cut through them, or
the distant aura of a bolt shocked them to a merciful death.

It was a three-dimensional, thousand-mile spread of fantasy infernal.
Out of it, after an hour or two, a steady sift of every manner of
wreckage was drifting down upon the Moon. The scene began to blur. A
haze like glowing star-dust, or the radiance from a comet's tail, was
spreading a weirdly luminous mist, blurring, obscuring the scene. This
was the released electrons and the dissipating gases of the space guns
and exploding projectiles, forming dust which glowed in the mingled
starlight and Earthlight.

The _Star-Streak_ had plunged, during those six or eight hours,
through the battle area. Our several encounters were all characterized
by the _Star-Streak's_ extreme flexibility, her speed, mobility, and
Molo's reckless skill. We came through unscathed. There is a certain
advantage for the man who seems not to care for his own life. But
there was an encounter, the last one as it chanced, just before we
emerged downward out of the fog and found ourselves no more than a
thousand miles above the Moon's surface, where our adversary was
equally reckless and only Molo's skill saved us.

We came upon a Venus police ship. We plunged, as though seeking a
collision, and the Venus ship was willing. For a moment of chaos, both
barrages held against the exchange of bolts. Then we rolled over and
tilted down from the impulse of the stern rockets. The passing must
have been within feet, not miles; and in that second, Molo timed a
shot to strike at the enemy bottom. It went through their barrage.
Behind us, a second later, there was only strewn wreckage of the ship,
so finely powdered that it became a silvery radiance, like moonlight
shining on a little patch of fog.

"Not too bad?" Molo gazed around for appreciation. "Not bad, Gregg
Haljan? Molo is not too unskillful?"

We hung now close above the Moon's surface, with the battle area over
us. Out of the fog up there came t