ticularly favorable time; for there are many planets and satellites,
of which they can know nothing, to throw their vessels off the course.

"Some material essential to the operation of their war machinery
apparently must come from their own planet, for they have ceased
attacking, have dug in, and are simply holding their ground. It may be
that they had not anticipated as much resistance as we could offer with
space-ships and intra-atomic energy. At any rate, they have apparently
saved enough of that material to enable them to hold out until the next
conjunction--I cannot think of a better word for it--shall occur. Our
forces are attacking constantly, with all the armament at our command,
but it is certain that if the next conjunction is allowed to occur, it
means the end of the entire Kondalian nation."'

"What d'you mean 'if the next conjunction is _allowed_ to occur?'"
interjected Seaton. "Nobody can stop it."

"I am stopping it," Dunark stated quietly, grim purpose in every
lineament. "That conjunction shall never occur. That is why I must have
the vast quantities of salt and 'X'. We are building abutments of arenak
upon the first satellite of our seventh planet, and upon our sixth
planet itself. We shall cover them with plated active copper, and
install chronometers to throw the switches at precisely the right
moment. We have calculated the exact times, places, and magnitudes of
the forces to be used. We shall throw the sixth planet some distance out
of its orbit, and force the first satellite of the seventh planet clear
out of that planet's influence. The two bodies whose motions we have
thus changed will collide in such a way that the resultant body will
meet the planet of our enemies in head-on collision, long before the
next conjunction. The two bodies will be of almost equal masses, and
will have opposite and approximately equal velocities; hence the
resultant fused or gaseous mass will be practically without velocity and
will fall directly into the fourteenth sun."

"Wouldn't it be easier to destroy it with an explosive copper bomb?"

"Easier, yes, but much more dangerous to the rest of our solar system.
We cannot calculate exactly the effect of the collisions we are
planning--but it is almost certain that an explosion of sufficient
violence to destroy all life upon the planet would disturb its motion
sufficiently to endanger the entire system. The way we have in mind will
simply allow the planet and one