er walls were long since melted, retained only by
the presence of the metal walls. Smoke was beginning to filter out now,
and Kendall recognized a new, and deadlier menace! Heat--quantities of
heat were being poured into the little ship, and the neutron guns were
doing their best to add to it. The paraffin was confined in there--and
like any substance, it could be volatilized, and as a vapor, develop
pressure--explosive pressure!

The Miran seemed satisfied in his tactics so far--and changed them.
Forty-seven million miles from Earth, the Miran simply accelerated a bit
more, and crowded the Solarian ship a bit. White-faced, Buck Kendall was
forced to turn a bit aside. The Miran turned also. Kendall turned a bit
more--

Flashing across his range of vision at an incredible speed, a tiny
thing, no more than twenty feet long and five in diameter, a scout-ship
appeared. Its tiny nose ultra-violet beam was blasting a solid cylinder
of violet incandescence a foot across in the hull of the Miran--and, to
the Miran, angling swiftly across his range of vision. Its magnetic
field clashed for a thousandth of a second with the T-253, instantly
meeting, and absorbing the fringing edges. Then--it swept through the
Miran's magnetic shield as easily. The delicate instruments of the scout
instantaneously adjusted its own magnetic field as much as possible.
There was resistance, enormous resistance--the ship crumpled in on
itself, the tail vanished in dust as a sweeping crumbler beam caught it
at last--and the remaining portion of the ship plowed into the nose of
the Miran.

The Miran's force-control-room was wrecked. For perhaps a minute and a
half, the ship was without control, then the control was
re-established--and in vain the telescopes and instruments searched for
the T-253. Lightless, her rockets out now, her fields damped down to
extinction, the T-253 was lost in the pulsing, gyrating fields of half a
dozen scout-ships.

Kendall looked grimly at the crushed spot on the nose of the Miran. His
ship was drifting slowly away from the greater ship. Presently, however,
the Miran put on speed in the direction of Earth, and the T-253 fell far
behind. The Miran was not seriously injured. But that scout pilot, in
sacrificing life, had thrown dust in their eyes for just those few
moments Kendall had needed to lose a lightless ship in lightless
space--lightless--for the Mirans at any rate. The IP ships had been
covered with a black pain