that city. Arcot turned the ship and
called his decision to Morey. As he did so, one of the Thessian ships
suddenly swerved violently, and plunged downward. The attractive ray was
in action. It struck the rocks of Neptune, and plunged in. Half buried,
it stopped. Stopped--and backed out! The tremendously strong relux and
lux had withstood the blow, and these strange, inhumanly powerful men
had not been injured!

Two of the ships darted toward him simultaneously, flashing out
molecular rays. The rays glanced off of Arcot's screen already in place,
but the tubes were showing almost at once that this could not be
sustained. It was evident that the swiftly approaching ships would soon
break down the shields. Arcot turned the ship and drove to one side. His
eyes went dead.

He cut into artificial space, waited ten seconds, then cut back. The
scene before him changed. It seemed a different world. The light was
very dim, so dim he could scarcely see the images on the view plate.
They were so deep a red that they were very near to black. Even Sirius,
the flaming blue-white star was red. The darting Thessian ships were
moving quite slowly now, moving at a speed that was easy to follow.
Their rays, before ionizing the air brilliantly red, were now dark. The
instruments showed that the screen was no longer encountering serious
loading, and, further, the load was coming in at a frequency harmlessly
far down the radio spectrum!

Arcot stared in wide-eyed amazement. What could the Thessians have done
that caused this change? He reached up and increased the amplification
on the eyes to a point that made even the dim illumination sufficient.
Wade was staring in amazement, too.

"Lord! What an idea!" suddenly exclaimed Arcot.

Wade was staring at Arcot in equally great amazement. "What's the
secret?" he asked.

"Time, man, time! We are in an advanced time plane, living faster than
they, our atoms of fuel are destroyed faster, our second is shorter. In
one second of our earthly time our generators do the same amount of work
as usual, but they do many, many times more work in one second, of the
time we were in! We are under the advanced time field."

Wade could see it all. The red light--normal light seen through eyes
enormously speeded in all perceptions. The change, the dimness--dim
because less energy reached them per second of their time. Then came
this blue light, as they reached the X-ray spectrum of Sirius, and saw
X-rays