is henchman, Sir Nevil Ormm.

"Well, Sir Nevil! A pleasant surprise," he heard himself saying.
"We last met on the terrace at Karvall House, did we not?"

For once, the paper-white face of Andray Dunnan's _ame damnee_
showed expression, but whether it was fear, surprise, shock, hatred,
anger, or what combination of them, Trask could no more than guess.

"Trask! Satan curse you...!"

Then the screen went blank. In the telescopic screen, the other ship
came on unfalteringly. Paul Koreff, who had gotten more data on
mass, engine energy-output and dimensions, was identifying her as
the _Enterprise_.

"Well, go for her! Give her everything!"

* * * * *

They didn't need the order; Vann Larch was speaking rapidly into his
hand-phone, and Alvyn Karffard was hurling his voice all over the
_Nemesis_, warning of sudden deceleration and direction change, and
while he was speaking, things in the command room began sliding. In
the telescopic screen, the other ship was plainly visible; he could
see the oval patch of black with the blue crescent, and in his
screen Dunnan would be seeing the sword-impaled skull of the
_Nemesis_.

If only he could be sure Dunnan was there to see it. If it had only
been Dunnan's face, instead of Ormm's, that he had seen in the
screen. As it was, he couldn't be sure, and if one of the missiles
that were already going out made a lucky hit, he might never be
sure. He didn't care who killed Dunnan, or how. All he wanted was
to know that Dunnan's death had set him free from a self-assumed
obligation that was now meaningless to him.

The _Enterprise_ launched counter-missiles; so did the _Nemesis_.
There were momentarily unbearable flashes of pure energy and from
them globes of incandescence spread and vanished. Something must
have gotten through; red lights flashed on the damage board. It had
been something heavy enough even to jolt the huge mass of the
_Nemesis_. At the same time, the other ship took a hit from
something that would have vaporized her had she not been armored in
collapsium. Then, as they passed close together, guns hammered back
and forth along with missiles, and then the _Enterprise_ was out of
sight around the horizon.

Another ship, the size of Otto Harkaman's _Corisande II_, was
approaching; she bore a tapering, red-nailed feminine hand dangling
a planet by a string. They rushed toward each other, planting a
garden of evanescent fire-flowers be