blaster, disemboweled them
with their own knives. He smiled down upon them as they writhed and
moaned on the floor and their moans were heard for a long time by the
other Gerns in the ship before they died. No more humans were harmed.

They discovered that operation of the cruiser was relatively simple,
basically similar to the operation of Terran ships as described in the
text book the original Lake had written. Most of the operations were
performed by robot mechanisms and the manual operations, geared to the
slower reflexes of the Gerns, were easily mastered.

They could spend the forty-day voyage to Athena in further learning and
practice so on the sixth day they prepared to depart. The unicorns had
been given the freedom they had fought so well for and reconnaissance
vehicles were loaned from the cruiser to take their place. Later there
would be machinery and supplies of all kinds brought in by freighter
ships from Athena.

Time was precious and there was a long, long job ahead of them. They
blasted up from Ragnarok on the morning of the seventh day and went into
the black sea of hyperspace.

By then the Gern commander was no longer of any value to them. His
unwillingness to believe that savages had wrested his ship from him had
increased until his compartment became his control room to him and he
spent the hours laughing and giggling before an imaginary viewscreen
whereon the cruiser's blasters were destroying, over and over, the
Ragnarok town and all the humans in it.

But Narth, who had wanted to have them tortured to death for daring to
resist capture, became very cooperative. In the control room his
cooperation was especially eager. On the twentieth day of the voyage
they let him have what he had been trying to gain by subterfuge: access
to the transmitter when no men were within hearing distance.

After that his manner abruptly changed. Each day his hatred for them and
his secret anticipation became more evident.

The thirty-fifth day came, with Athena five days ahead of them--the day
of the execution they had let him arrange for them.

* * * * *

Stars filled the transdimensional viewscreen, the sun of Athena in the
center. Humbolt watched the space to the lower left and the flicker came
again; a tiny red dot that was gone again within a microsecond, so
quickly that Narth in the seat beside him did not see it.

It was the quick peek of another ship; a ship that was r