s finished, done for. It was out of the fight, rolling down the vast
hill of the sky, it would smash on the planet below.

They were following it.

There was still no answer from the engine room.

"Space suits!" Hargraves ordered. "Nielson, you stay here. Ron Val, you
others, come with me."

CHAPTER II

Vegan World

The engine room was crammed to the roof with machinery. The bulked
housings of the atomics, their heavy screens shutting off the deadly
radiations generated in the heart of energy seething within the twin
domes, were at the front. They looked like two blast furnaces that had
somehow wandered into a space ship by mistake and hadn't been able to
find their way out again. The fires of hell, hotter than any blast
furnace had ever been, seethed within them.

Behind the atomics were the Kruchek drivers, twin brawny giants chained
to the treadmill they pushed through the skies. Silent now. Not
grumbling at their task. Loafing. Like lazy slaves conscious of their
power, they worked only when the lash was on them.

Between the drivers was the control panel. Ninety-nine percent
automatic, those controls. They needed little human attention, and got
little. There were never more than three men on duty here. This engine
room almost operated itself.

It had ceased to operate itself, Jed Hargraves saw, as he forced open
the last stubborn air-tight door separating the engine room from the
rest of the ship. Ceased because--Involuntarily he cried out.

He could see the sky.

A great V-shaped notch straddled the back of the ship. Something,
striking high on the curve of the hull, had driven through inches of
magna steel, biting a gigantic chunk out of the ship. The beam from the
sphere! That flashing streak of light that had driven through the
defense screen. It had struck here.

"Jed! They're dead!"

That was Ron Val's voice, choking over the radio. One of the men in this
engine room had been Hal Sarkoff, a black-browed giant from somewhere in
Montana. Engines had behaved for Sarkoff. Intuitively he had seemed to
know mechanics.

He and Ron Val had been particular friends.

"The air went," Hargraves said. "When that hole was knocked in the hull,
the air went. The automatic doors blocked off the rest of the ship. The
poor devils--"

The air had gone and the cold had come. He could see Sarkoff's body
lying beside one of the drivers. The two other men were across the room.
A door to the stern compar