lectric weapon they had seen!

Instantly, the magnetic beams left them, and they saw behind them a
single Satorian ship heading toward them, surrounded by that same bluish
halo of light. A suicide ship!

Arcot accelerated away from it as Fuller hit it with a molecular beam.
The ship reeled and stopped, and the _Ancient Mariner_ pulled away from
it rapidly. Then, the frost-covered ship of the dead came on, still
heading for them!

Arcot turned and went off to the right, but like a pursuing Nemesis, the
strange ship came after them in the shortest, most direct route!

The molecular beams were useless now; there was no molecular energy left
in the frozen hulk that accelerated toward them. Suddenly, the two
envelopes of blue light touched and coalesced! A great, blinding arc
leaped between the two ships as the speeding Satorian hull smashed
violently against the side of the _Ancient Mariner_! The men ducked
automatically, and were hurled against their seat-straps with tremendous
force. There was a rending, crashing roar, a sea of flame--and darkness.

They could only have been unconscious a few seconds, for when the fog
went away, they could see the glowing mass of the enemy ship still
falling far beneath them. The lux wall where it had hit was still
glowing red.

"Morey!" Arcot called. "You all right? Wade? Fuller?"

"Okay!" Morey answered.

So were Wade and Fuller.

"It was the lux hull that saved us," Arcot said. "It wouldn't break, and
the temperature of the arc didn't bother it. And since it wouldn't carry
a current, we didn't get the full electrical effect.

"I'm going to convince those birds that this ship is made of something
they can't touch! We'll give them a real show!"

He dived downward, back into the battle.

It was a show, all right! It was impossible to fight the Earth ship. The
enemy had to concentrate four magnetic rays on it to use their electric
weapon, and they could only do that by sheer luck!

And even that was of little use, for they simply lost one of their own
ships without harming the _Ancient Mariner_ in the least.

Ship after ship crumpled in on itself like crushed tinfoil or hurled
itself violently to the ground as the molecular beams touched them. The
Satorian fleet was a fleet no longer; it was a small collection of
disorganized ships whose commanders had only one thought--to flee!

The few ships that were left spearheaded out into space, using every bit
of acceleration that