robably outshoot, outrun, and outfight us. Let's hope
we don't meet them until we've done our work."

On this note the little discussion broke up as the gong rang for the
next watch.

It made sense to Burl. If the _Magellan_ could just operate fast enough,
keep on the jump, they'd save the day. But--and he realized that nobody
had mentioned it aloud--it also followed that the enemy--however small
its group--was still in the solar system somewhere and would certainly
be starting to take action very soon now.

The time came when the ship was to start slowing, to prepare itself for
the meeting with Venus. Burl saw the hour and minute approach and
watched Lockhart take the controls and set the new readings. The steady
hum of the generators--a vibration that had become a constant feature of
the ship--altered, and for everyone it was a relief. Their minds had
become attuned to the steady pitch. One didn't realize how annoying a
nuisance it was until it stopped. As the stellar generators let down on
the drag on the Sun, the gravity within the ship lessened. In a few
moments there was a condition of zero, and those who had forgotten to
strap themselves down found that they were floating about in the air,
most of them giddy.

There was a shift in the pitch, and the generators applied repulsion
against the pull of the Sun. Those floating in the air crashed suddenly
against the ceiling, then slid violently down the walls onto the floor
as the inner sphere rotated on its gymbals to meet the new center of
gravitational pull--this time away from the Sun.

The viewers flickered off and then on again as their connecting surfaces
inside and outside the sphere's double layer of walls slid apart and
matched up again. For an instant, as he saw the viewers blank out, Burl
thought of what might happen if the sphere didn't rotate all the way.
They would find themselves blind.

Now the ship proceeded on its charted orbit, slowing to meet Venus.
Several hours went by, one meal, and Burl had returned to his bunk, his
rest period having arrived. Russ remained at the controls on duty,
checking astronomically the new speed and deceleration.

Burl tossed restlessly, the light out in the little cabin. Something was
bothering him, and after a while he realized that Clyde should have come
off duty before this. He glanced at the clock and calculated that Russ
was two hours overdue. What was wrong?

He slipped out of his bunk and climbed into hi