as they gazed at their viewplates, and manipulated the little
sets of controls placed convenient to their hands.

* * * * *

The picture was a comic one to me, and I laughed, wondering how such
soft creatures had held the sturdy and virile American race in complete
subjection for centuries. But my laugh died as my mind grasped at the
obvious explanation. These Hans were only soft physically. Mentally they
were hard, efficient, ruthless, and conscienceless.

Impulsively I nosed my _swooper_ down toward the ship and shot toward it
at full rocket power. I had acted so swiftly that I had covered nearly
half the distance toward the ship before my mind slowly drifted out of
the daze of my emotion. This proved my undoing. Their scopeman saw me
too quickly, for in heading directly at them I became easily visible,
appearing as a steady, expanding point. Looking through their hull, I
saw the crew of a _dis_ ray generator come suddenly to attention. A
second later their beam engulfed me.

For an instant my heart stood still. But the inertron shell of my
swooper was impervious to the disintegrator ray. I was out of luck,
however, so far as my control over my tiny ship was concerned. I had
been hurtling in a direct line toward the ship when the beam found me.
Now, when I tried to swerve out of the beam, the swooper responded but
sluggishly to the shift I made in the rocket angle. I was, of course,
traveling straight down a beam of vacuum. As my craft slowly nosed to
the edge of the beam, the air rushing into this vacuum from all sides
threw it back in again.

Had I shot my ship across one of these beams at right angles, my
momentum would have carried me through with no difficulty. But I had no
momentum now except in the line of the beam, and this being a vacuum
now, my momentum, under full rocket power, was vastly increased. This
realization gave me a second and more acute thrill. Would I be able to
check my little craft in time, or would I, helpless as a bullet itself,
crash through the shell of the Han ship to my own destruction?

I shut off my rocketmotor, but noticed no practical diminution of speed.

* * * * *

It was the fear of the Hans themselves that saved me. Through my
ultroscope I saw sudden alarm on their faces, hesitation, a frantic
officer in the control room jabbering into his phone. Then shakily the
crew flipped their beam off to the side. The jar