mp it in, and used four different rays on us
doing it. Which speaks well for a little ship! But they burned off the
relux on one room here, and it's a wreck. The molecs hit everything in
it. Looks like something bad," called Arcot. The room was Morey's, but
he'd find that out himself. "In the meantime, see if you can tell where
we are. I got loose from their rays by going on both the high speed
time-field and the space control at full, with all generators going full
blast. Man, they had a stranglehold on us that time! But wait till we
get that new ship turned out!"

With the telectroscope they could see what was happening. The terrific
bombardment of rays was continuing, and the fleets were locked now in a
struggle, the combined fleets of Earth and Venus and of Nansal, far
across the void. Many of the terrestrian, or better, Solarian ships,
were equipped with space distortion apparatus, now, and had some measure
of safety in that the attractive rays of the Thessians could not be so
concentrated on them. In numbers was safety; Arcot had been endangered
because he was practically alone at the time they attacked.

But it was obvious that the Solarian fleet was losing. They could not
compete with the heavier ships, and now the frequent flaming bursts of
light that told of a ship caught in the new deadly ray showed another
danger.

"I think Earth is lost if you cannot aid it soon, Arcot, for other
Thessian ships are coming," said Stel Felso Theu softly.

From out of the plane of the planetary orbits they were coming, across
space from some other world, a fleet of dozens of them. They were
visible as one after another leapt into normal time-rates.

"Why don't they fight in advanced time?" asked Morey, half aloud.

"Because the genius that designed that apparatus didn't think of it.
Remember, Morey, those ships have their time apparatus connected with
their power apparatus so that the power has to feed the time
continuously. They have no coils like ours. When they advance their
time, they're weakened every other way.

"We need that new ship. Are we going to make it?" demanded Arcot.

"Take weeks at best. What chance?" asked Morey.

"Plenty; watch." As he spoke, Arcot pulled open the time controls, and
spun the ship about. They headed off toward a tiny point of light far
beyond. It rushed toward them, grew with the swiftness of an exploding
bomb, and was suddenly a great, rough fragment of a planet hanging
before them