e corner of the battle, he felt the lustful rage of Captain Wow
as the big Persian tomcat detonated lights while he approached the
streak of dust which threatened the ship and the people within.

The lights scored near-misses.

The dust flattened itself, changing from the shape of a sting-ray into
the shape of a spear.

Not three milliseconds had elapsed.

* * * * *

Father Moontree was talking human words and was saying in a voice that
moved like cold molasses out of a heavy jar, "C-A-P-T-A-I-N."
Underhill knew that the sentence was going to be "Captain, move fast!"

The battle would be fought and finished before Father Moontree got
through talking.

Now, fractions of a millisecond later, the Lady May was directly in
line.

Here was where the skill and speed of the Partners came in. She could
react faster than he. She could see the threat as an immense Rat
coming direct at her.

She could fire the light-bombs with a discrimination which he might
miss.

He was connected with her mind, but he could not follow it.

His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien
enemy. It was like no wound on Earth--raw, crazy pain which started
like a burn at his navel. He began to writhe in his chair.

Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May
struck back at their enemy.

Five evenly spaced photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred
thousand miles.

The pain in his mind and body vanished.

[Illustration]

He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through
the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always
disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they
sensed as gigantic space Rats disappeared at the moment of
destruction.

Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of
them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come
and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge
of planoform.

Once more the ship went skip.

He could hear Woodley thinking at him. "You don't have to bother much.
This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while."

Twice again the twinge, the skip.

He had no idea where he was until the lights of the Caledonia space
board shone below.

[Illustration]

With a weariness that lay almost beyond the limits of thought, he
threw his mind back into rapport with the pin-set, fixing the Lady
May's proj