than footballs, outside
the spaceships. They planoformed with the ships. They rode beside them
in their six-pound craft ready to attack.

The tiny ships of the Partners were swift. Each carried a dozen
pinlights, bombs no bigger than thimbles.

The pinlighters threw the Partners--quite literally threw--by means of
mind-to-firing relays direct at the Dragons.

What seemed to be Dragons to the human mind appeared in the form of
gigantic Rats in the minds of the Partners.

Out in the pitiless nothingness of space, the Partners' minds
responded to an instinct as old as life. The Partners attacked,
striking with a speed faster than Man's, going from attack to attack
until the Rats or themselves were destroyed. Almost all the time, it
was the Partners who won.

With the safety of the inter-stellar skip, skip, skip of the ships,
commerce increased immensely, the population of all the colonies went
up, and the demand for trained Partners increased.

Underhill and Woodley were a part of the third generation of
pinlighters and yet, to them, it seemed as though their craft had
endured forever.

[Illustration]

Gearing space into minds by means of the pin-set, adding the Partners
to those minds, keying up the mind for the tension of a fight on which
all depended--this was more than human synapses could stand for long.
Underhill needed his two months' rest after half an hour of fighting.
Woodley needed his retirement after ten years of service. They were
young. They were good. But they had limitations.

So much depended on the choice of Partners, so much on the sheer luck
of who drew whom.

THE SHUFFLE

Father Moontree and the little girl named West entered the room. They
were the other two pinlighters. The human complement of the Fighting
Room was now complete.

Father Moontree was a red-faced man of forty-five who had lived the
peaceful life of a farmer until he reached his fortieth year. Only
then, belatedly, did the authorities find he was telepathic and agree
to let him late in life enter upon the career of pinlighter. He did
well at it, but he was fantastically old for this kind of business.

Father Moontree looked at the glum Woodley and the musing Underhill.
"How're the youngsters today? Ready for a good fight?"

"Father always wants a fight," giggled the little girl named West. She
was such a little little girl. Her giggle was high and childish. She
looked like the last person in the world one wou