may not know that you know
it, but you do. Turn your heaviest searchlight toward me--I'll do the
same."

There was a click as Dunark's power was shut off abruptly, and Seaton
grinned as he cut his own.

"That's right, too, folks. In Osnomian battles we always used a
sign-language when we couldn't hear anything--and that was most of the
time. I know it as well as I know English, now that I am reminded of the
fact."

He shifted his course to intercept that of the Osnomian vessel. After a
time the watchers picked out a minute point of light, moving
comparatively rapidly against the stars, and knew it to be the
searchlight of the _Kondal_. Soon the two vessels were almost side by
side, moving cautiously forward, and Seaton set up a sixty-inch
parabolic reflector, focused upon a coil. As they went on, the purple
light continued to flash more and more rapidly, but still nothing was to
be seen.

"Take number six visiplate, will you, Mart? It's telescopic, equivalent
to a twenty-inch refractor. I'll tell you where to look in a
minute--this reflector increases the power of the regular indicator." He
studied meters and adjusted dials. "Set on nineteen hours forty-three
minutes, and two hundred seventy-one degrees. He's too far away yet to
read exactly, but that'll put him in the field of vision."

"Is this radiation harmful?" asked Margaret.

"Not yet--it's too weak. Pretty soon we may be able to feel it; then
I'll throw out a screen against it. When it's strong enough, it's pretty
deadly stuff. See anything, Mart?"

"I see something, but it is very indistinct. It is moving in sharper
now. Yes, it is a space-ship, shaped like a dirigible airship."

"See it yet, Dunark?" Seaton signaled.

"Just sighted it. Ready to attack?"

"I am not. I'm going to run. Let's go, and go fast!"

Dunark signaled violently, and Seaton shook his head time after time,
stubbornly.

"A difficulty?" asked Crane.

"Yes. He wants to go jump on it, but I'm not looking for trouble with
any such craft as that--it must be a thousand feet long and is certainly
neither Terrestrial nor Osnomian. I say beat it while we're all in one
piece. How about it?"

"Absolutely," concurred Crane and both women.

The bar was reversed and the _Skylark_ leaped away. The _Kondal_
followed, although the observers could see that Dunark was raging.
Seaton swung number six visiplate around, looked once, and switched on
the radio.

"Well, Dunark," he said grimly