the fierce and bloodthirsty Osnomian prince, leaped to his feet,
his eyes flashing.

"That's one thing I never could get about you, Dick!" he exclaimed in
English. "How a man with your brains can be so soft--so sloppily
sentimental, gets clear past me. You remind me of a bowl of mush--you
wade around in slush clear to your ears. Faugh! It's their lives or
ours! Tell me what button to push and I'll be only too glad to push it.
I wanted to blow up Urvania and you wouldn't let me; I haven't killed an
enemy for ages, and that's my trade. Cut out the sob-sister act and for
Cat's sake, let's get busy!"

"'At-a-boy, Dunark! That's tellin' 'im! But it's all right with me--I'll
be glad to let you do it. When I say 'shoot' throw in that plunger
there--number sixty-three."

Seaton manipulated controls until two electrodes of force were clamped
in place, one at either end of the huge power-bar of the enemy vessel;
adjusted rheostats and forces to send a disintegrating current through
that massive copper cylinder, and gave the word. Dunark threw in the
switch with a vicious thrust, as though it were an actual sword which he
was thrusting through the vitals of one of the awesome crew, and the
very Universe exploded around them--exploded into one mad, searing
coruscation of blinding, dazzling light as the gigantic cylinder of
copper resolved itself instantaneously into the pure energy from which
its metal originally had come into being.

Seaton and Dunark staggered back from the visiplates, blinded by the
intolerable glare of light, and even Crane, working at his model of the
galaxy, blinked at the intensity of the radiation. Many minutes passed
before the two men could see through their tortured eyes.

"Zowie! That was fierce!" exclaimed Seaton, when a slowly-returning
perception of things other than dizzy spirals and balls of flame assured
him that his eyesight was not permanently gone. "It's nothing but my own
fool carelessness, too. I should have known that with all the light
frequencies in heterodyne for visibility, enough of that same stuff
would leak through to make strong medicine on these visiplates--for I
knew that that bar weighed a hundred tons and would liberate energy
enough to volatilize our Earth and blow the by-products clear to
Arcturus. How're you coming, Dunark? See anything yet?"

"Coming along O. K. now, I guess--but I thought for a few minutes I'd
been bloody well jobbed."

"I'll do better next time. I'