eck of the
Sun-tapper's scout cruiser.

Chapter 16. _In Orbit Around Pluto_

There was a mad rush to action stations. Detmar, Ferrati and Oberfield,
who had been in their bunks, dashed to their posts while others tried to
pass them in both directions. Haines and Burl hastily climbed into their
space suits, while Ferrati and Boulton manned the inner defensive
controls.

Burl pulled the tight-fitting harness of his insulated space suit over
him. The shape of the Sun-tapper ship came into focus on the tiny screen
of the air lock viewer. It was approaching them at a frighteningly rapid
pace. He could see the broken framework of one of its two globes--the
one on which they had scored their hit. The other globe and the
connecting passages were strikingly clear. Tiny circles of windows were
visible in the passage section, which undoubtedly housed the operators
of the vessel. For a fleeting instant he realized that as yet none of
the Earthlings had any inkling of what these creatures looked like.

While he knew that the scene was telescopic, the ship was undoubtedly
approaching them fast; or rather, they were catching up to it at a
perilous pace! Whether the wrecked enemy had slowed down more than they
had, as it approached its Plutonian base, or whether some other surprise
lay ahead, they had no idea.

Burl felt the jarring impact as Lockhart cut the _Magellan's_ drive.
There was an instant of weightlessness, and then their weight reversed
as the A-G drive strove to slow down the ship. Within the air lock they
were outside the living space of the sphere, suspended beneath the drive
chamber. Burl could see the walls of the inner sphere whirl past him, a
foot away, as the living quarters rotated to shift with the
gravitational change. And at that very moment, while all those inside
were temporarily helpless, disaster struck.

Burl had just finished adjusting his airtight helmet, and Haines was
already on his way forward to the outer shell port and the rocket guns,
when there was a flash of lightning from the crippled enemy spaceship.
The foe was still capable of fighting--and it had fired
first--alarmingly close.

Within what seemed a split second after Burl's eyes had registered the
flash on the little viewplate, the _Magellan_ received the full force of
the mighty electronic discharge. To Burl it seemed as if a thunderclap
had sounded in his ears, and as if he had been plunged into a bath of
white flames. The