then she could go faster.

"Full speed--"

Nielson looked up from the bank of buttons. His face was ashen. "She
doesn't respond, Jed. The drivers are off. The engine room is knocked
out."

There was no rumble from Bill Kruchek's going-faster-than-hell engines.
The hiss of the atomics was still faintly audible. Short of
annihilation, nothing could knock them out. Energy was being generated
but it wasn't getting to the drive. Leaping to the controls, Hargraves
tried them himself.

They didn't respond.

"Engine room!" he shouted into the communication system.

There was no answer.

The ship began to yaw, to drop away toward the planet below them. The
planet was far distant as yet, but the grasping fingers of its gravity
were reaching toward the vessel, pulling it down.

Voices shouted within the ship.

"Jed!"

"What happened?"

"Jed, we're falling!"

"That ball, Jed--"

Voices calling to Jed Hargraves, asking him what to do. He couldn't
answer. There was no answer. There was only--the ball! It was the
answer.

Through the observation port, he could see the circular ship. It was
getting ready to attack again. The sphere was moving leisurely toward
its already crippled prey, getting ready to deliver the final stroke. It
would answer all questions of this crew, answer them unmistakably. It
leered at them.

_Wham!_

The ship vibrated to a sudden gust of sound. Something lashed out from
the vessel. Hargraves did not see it go because it, too, went faster
than the eye could follow. But he knew what it was. The sound told him.
He saw the hole appear in the sphere. A round hole that opened inward.
Dust puffed outward.

_Wham, wham, wham!_

The negatron! The blood brother of the defense screen, its energies
concentrated into a pencil of radiation. Faster than anyone could see it
happen, three more holes appeared in the sphere, driving through its
outer shell, punching into the machinery at its heart.

The sphere shuddered under the impact. It turned. Light spewed out of
it, beaming viciously into this alien sky without direction. Smoke
boiled from the ball. Turning it seemed to roll along the sky. It looked
like a huge burning snowball rolling down some vast hill.

Ron Val lifted a white face from the sighting 'scope of the negatron.

"Did--did I get him?"

"I'll say you did!" Hargraves heard somebody shout exultantly. He was
surprised to discover his own voice was doing the shouting. The sphere
wa