instruments which would measure the angle, bearing, and distance of the
two planets now on this side of the sun--the gas-giant and the
oxygen-world to sunward. Their orbital speeds and distances were known.
The position, course, and speed of the _Niccola_ could be computed from
any two observations on them.

[Illustration]

Diane had returned to the utterly necessary routine of the radar room
which was the nerve-center of the ship, gathering all information needed
for navigation in space. The fact that there had been a collision, that
the _Niccola's_ engines were melted to unlovely scrap, that the Plumie
ship was now welded irremovably to a side-keel, and that a Plumie was
signaling to humans while both ships went spinning through space toward
an unknown destination--these things did not affect the obligations of
the radar room.

Baird got other images of the Plumie ship into sharp focus. So near, the
scanners required adjustment for precision.

"Take a look at this!" he said wryly.

She looked. The view was of the Plumie as welded fast to the _Niccola_.
The welding was itself an extraordinary result of the Plumie's
battle-tactics. Tractor and pressor beams were known to men, of course,
but human beings used them only under very special conditions. Their
operation involved the building-up of terrific static charges. Unless a
tractor-beam generator could be grounded to the object it was to pull, it
tended to emit lightning-bolts at unpredictable intervals and in entirely
random directions. So men didn't use them. Obviously, the Plumies did.

They'd handled the _Niccola's_ rockets with beams which charged the
golden ship to billions of volts. And when the silicon-bronze Plumie ship
touched the cobalt-steel _Niccola_--why--that charge had to be shared. It
must have been the most spectacular of all artificial electric flames.
Part of the _Niccola's_ hull was vaporized, and undoubtedly part of the
Plumie. But the unvaporized surfaces were molten and in contact--and they
stuck.

For a good twenty feet the two ships were united by the most perfect of
vacuum-welds. The wholly dissimilar hulls formed a space-catamaran, with
a sort of valley between their bulks. Spinning deliberately, as the
united ships did, sometimes the sun shone brightly into that valley, and
sometimes it was filled with the blackness of the pit.

While Diane looked, a round door revolved in the side of the Plumie ship.
As Diane caught her breath, Ba