rang to one of the two ports
in the navigating room and unshuttered it.

"The lights, please?" he asked, over his shoulder. Kincaide nodded, and
switched off the _ethon_ tubes which illuminated the room. The three of
us crowded around the recessed port.

* * * * *

The things were not only close: they were veritably upon us! Even as we
looked, one of them swept by the port so close that, save for the thick
crystal, one might have reached out into space and touched it.

The television disk had represented them very accurately. They were, in
their greatest dimension, perhaps twice the height of a man, and at
close range their reddish color was more brilliant than I had imagined;
in the thickest portion of the crescent, which seemed to be the nucleus,
the radiance of the thing was almost blinding.

It was obvious that they were not material bodies. There were no
definite boundaries to their bodies; they faded off into nothingness in
a sort of fringe, almost like a dim halo.

An attention signal sounded sharply, and Kincaide groped his way swiftly
to answer it.

"It's Correy, sir," he said. "He reports his rays are utterly useless,
and asks for further orders."

"Tell him to cease action, and report here immediately." I turned to
Hendricks, staring out the port beside me. "Well, what do you make of
them now?"

Before he could reply, Kincaide called out sharply.

"Come here, sir! The charts are out of commission. We've gone blind."

It was true. The charts were no more than twin rectangles of lambent red
flame, with a yellow spark glowing dimly in the center of each, the fine
black lines ruled in the surface showing clearly against the wavering
red fire.

"Mr. Hendricks!" I snapped. "Let's have your theory--reasonable or
otherwise."

* * * * *

Hendricks, his face pressed at an angle against one side of the port,
turned toward me, and swung the shutter into place. Kincaide snapped on
the lights.

"It's no longer a theory, sir," he said in a choked, hushed voice,
"although it's still unreasonable. These things--are _eating_ us!"

"Eating us?" Correy's voice joined Kincaide's and mine in the
exclamation of amazement. He had just entered the navigating room in
response to my order.

"Eroding us, absorbing us--whatever you want to call it. There's one at
work close enough to the port so that I could see it. It is feeding upon
our hull as an elec