anks, as insanely and
irremediably as the first.

Taine's voice screamed out of a speaker, hysterical with fury:

"_Detonate! Detonate! They've taken over the rockets and are throwing 'em
back at us! Detonate all rockets!_"

The heavens seemed streaked and laced with lines of expanding smoke. But
now one plunging line erupted at its tip. A swelling globe of smoke
marked its end. Another blew up. And another--

The _Niccola's_ rockets faithfully blew themselves to bits on command
from the _Niccola's_ own weapons control. There was nothing else to be
done with them. They'd been taken over in flight. They'd been turned and
headed back toward their source. They'd have blasted the _Niccola_ to
bits but for their premature explosions.

There was a peculiar, stunned hush all through the _Niccola_. The only
sound that came out of any speaker in the radar room was Taine's voice,
high-pitched and raging, mouthing unspeakable hatred of the Plumies, whom
no human being had yet seen.

* * * * *

Baird sat tense in the frustrated and desperate composure of the man who
can only be of use while he is sitting still and keeping his head. The
vision screen was now a blur of writhing mist, lighted by the sun and
torn at by emptiness. There was luminosity where the ships had
encountered each other. It was sunshine upon thin smoke. It was like the
insanely enlarging head of a newborn comet, whose tail would be formed
presently by light-pressure. The Plumie ship was almost invisible behind
the unsubstantial stuff.

But Baird regarded his radar screens. Microwaves penetrated the mist of
rapidly ionizing gases.

"Radar to navigation!" he said sharply. "The Plumie ship is still
approaching, dancing as before!"

The skipper said with enormous calm:

"_Any other Plumie ships, Mr. Baird?_"

Diane interposed.

"No sign anywhere. I've been watching. This seems to be the only ship
within radar range."

"_We've time to settle with it, then_," said the skipper. "_Mr. Taine,
the Plumie ship is still approaching._"

Baird found himself hating the Plumies. It was not only that humankind
was showing up rather badly, at the moment. It was that the Plumie ship
had refused contact and forced a fight. It was that if the _Niccola_ were
destroyed the Plumie would carry news of the existence of humanity and of
the tactics which worked to defeat them. The Plumies could prepare an
irresistible fleet. Humanity could