ldn't hold even a detector on them, let alone a force that I can
control. Well, let's snap into it, fellow--on our way!"

"Just a minute, Dick. Take it easy, what are your plans?"

"Plans! Why worry about plans? Blow up that planet before any more of
'em get away, and then chase that boat clear to Andromeda, if necessary.
Let's go!"

"Calm down and be reasonable--you are getting hysterical again. They
have a maximum acceleration of five times the velocity of light. So have
we, exactly, since we adopted their own drive. Now if our acceleration
is the same as theirs, and they have a month's start, how long will it
take us to catch them?"

"Right again. Mart--I sure was going off half-cocked again," Seaton
conceded ruefully, after a moment's thought. "They'd always be going a
million or so times as fast as we would be, and getting further ahead of
us in geometrical ratio. What's your idea?"

"I agree with you that the time has come to destroy the planet of
Fenachrone. As for pursuing that vessel through intergalactic space,
that is your problem. You must figure out some method of increasing our
acceleration. Highly efficient as is this system of propulsion, it seems
to me that the knowledge of the Norlaminians should be able to improve
it in some detail. Even a slight increase in acceleration would enable
us to overtake them eventually."

"Hm--m--m." Seaton, no longer impetuous, was thinking deeply. "How far
are we apt to have to go?"

"Until we get close enough to them to use your rays--say half a million
light-years."

"But surely they'll stop, some time?"

"Of course, but not necessarily for many years. They are powered and
provisioned for a hundred years, you remember, and are going to 'a
distant galaxy.' Such a one as Ravindau would not have specified a
_distant_ Galaxy idly, and the very closest Galaxies are so far away
that even the Fenachrone astronomers, with their reflecting mirrors five
miles in diameter, could form only the very roughest approximations of
the true distances."

"Our astronomers are all wet in their guesses, then?"

"Their estimates are, without exception, far below the true values. They
are not even of the correct order of magnitude.'"

"Well, then, let's mop up on that planet. Then we'll go places and do
things."

Seaton had already located the magazines in which the power bars of the
Fenachrone war-vessels were stored, and it was a short task to erect a
secondary projector of