going to do?"

"Put on a tender."

"Why not the _Ancient Mariner_?" asked Wade.

"It isn't fitting. It was designed for individual use anyway," replied
Morey. "I suggest something more like this on a small scale. We won't
have much work on that, merely think of every detail of the big ship on
a small scale, with the exception of the control cube furnishings.
Instead of the numerous decks, swimming pool and so forth, have a large,
single room."

"Good enough," replied Arcot.

As if by magic, a machine appeared, a "small" machine of
two-hundred-foot length, modified slightly in some parts, its bottom
flattened, and equipped with an attractor anchor. Then they were ready.

"We will leave the _Mariner_ here, and get it later. This apparatus
won't be needed any longer, and we don't want the enemy to get it. Our
trial trip will be a fight!" called Arcot as he leaped from his seat.
The mass of the giant ship pulled him, and he fell slowly toward it.

Into its open port he flew, the others behind him, their suits still on.
The door shut behind them as Arcot, at the controls, closed it. As yet
they had not released the air supplies. It was airless.

Now the hiss of air, and the quickening of heat crept through it. The
water in the tanks thawed as the heat came, soaking through from the
great heaters. In minutes the air and heat were normal throughout the
great bulk. There was air in power compartments, though no one was
expected to go there, for the control room alone need be occupied;
vision-screens here viewed every part of the ship, and all about it.

The eyes of the new ship were set in recesses of the tremendously strong
cosmium wall, and over them, protecting them, was an infinitely thin,
but infinitely strong wall of artificial matter, permanently maintained.
It was opaque to all forms of radiation known from the longest Hertzian
to the shortest cosmics, save for the very narrow band of visible light.
Whether this protection would stop the Thessian beam that was so deadly
to lux and relux was not, of course, known. But Arcot hoped it would,
and, if that beam was radiant energy, or material particles, it would.

"We'll destroy our station here now, and leave the _Ancient Mariner_
where it is. Of course we are a long way out of the orbit this planetoid
followed, due to the effect of the time apparatus, but we can note where
it is, and we'll be able to find it when we want it," said Arcot, seated
at the great con