Space Can

LANCING through space, slammed along by a half million horses, the United States destroyer Menace anxiously sought the convoy which had been wailing to all the Universe for aid but now was still, still with an ominous quiet which could mean only its defeat.

She was only one, the Menace, and “they” would be more than one, but the little space can charged ahead, knowing well that she was a pebble from the mighty slingshot of the embattled fleet, a pebble where there should have been a shower of stones. Gracefully vicious, a bundle of frail ferocity, a wasp of space designed for and consecrated to the kill, the Menace flamed pugnaciously onward; she had her orders, she would carry them out to the last ounce of her fuel, the last charge in her guns and the last man within her complex and multiple compartments. She carried the Stars and Stripes upon her side, gold lace upon her bridge and infinite courage in her heart, for upon her belligerent little nose rested the full tradition of four-hundred-odd years of Navy, a tradition which took no dares, struck no colors and counted no odds.

She should have been a flotilla in this lonely cube of space, but with the fleet embattled off Saturn, no flotilla could be spared. She had done other jobs, hard ones, in this long war. There was faith in her, too much perhaps, and so she was here alone, raking the black with her detectors, bristling with impatience to engage the enemy, be he cruiser or battleship or just another destroyer; she was a terrier who had no eyes for the size of her rats.

On her bridge a buzzer sawed into the roar of her motion, and her executive officer stood aside to permit her summoned captain a view of the detector. Her captain, Lieutenant Carter, steadied himself with a hand on Ensign Wayton’s shoulder, and his face, usually young and efficient, became weary as he looked at the message which registered there.

In the detector, the supply ships were colorless spots, unmoving, without order. Among them were fainter dots which gruesomely indicated ships which were growing cool, having been emptied of air. Because spacesuits might mean desertion of crews near the first port, there were few in naval vessels unless they were crack ships like the Menace. This battle was almost over and there would be many, many dead.

One spot began to turn violet, which meant that a vessel, friend or foe, was heading toward the Menace.

Second-class Petty Officer Barnham was already training an analoscope on the red spot. He shuffled the spectrum plates of all navies until he had one which would compare with the lines on his screen.

“Saturn destroyer, sir,” said Barnham matter-of-factly.

Lieutenant Carter shook himself into the fighting machine he was trained to be. The situation was a plain one, a simple one. The convoy had been set upon by a raiding fleet, the existence of which had not been suspected. Bravely the train’s escorts had flashed into battle and had fought their ships to the last pound of air; that they had not done badly was indicated by the fact that only two Saturn vessels remained in action; that the entire escort was dead was plain in the silence of the battle communicator; that the supply ships were paralyzed and already half destroyed was to be found in the garble which spewed and gibbered from the all-channel speaker.

Another spot, which had evidently been traveling parallel to their course and so had showed white, now glowed dull red and Barnham said in a flat voice, “Another Saturn vessel, sir.”

They were coming up now into action. They had perhaps thirty minutes of strain in store before the first searching blasts of flame came to them and their own guns began to seek the vitals of the enemy. The captain pushed a thumb down upon the battle-stations button and the clanging roar broke the tight lines which had invisibly stretched through the little destroyer.

It was a matter of seconds until Lieutenant Carter had his battle plan. Plainly, he wanted nothing to do with this first destroyer, for he could feel from across black space the eagerness of hope in it that he would attack it and disregard the second ship, while that vessel, with all the brutal efficiency of a thing which knows nothing but destruction, blasted the life from the remainder of the supply vessels.

Abruptly, Lieutenant Carter understood a thing which in his inevitable resentment at being detached from the great battle had escaped him, and he understood, too, that insufficient weight had been given to this mission. He should have been started early. He should have the rest of his flotilla in a comfortable V behind him. For now the detector gave out information in shape instead of light and disclosed that this supply train consisted of the majority of fuel vessels possessed by the Navy. Someone had blundered. Intelligence had failed to discover that an enemy raiding fleet had slipped away from Saturn; guard ships had blundered in letting it through; flag had erred by not suspecting the possibility. For in those big hulks was the blood of the fleet and without it victory or destruction were the only alternatives. The battle fleet, already far beyond its radius, had no reserve. And from the state of his own bunkers, Lieutenant Carter knew that no one had sufficient fuel to return to Earth!

Everywhere through the ship men were strapping themselves at their posts or donning the heavy padding which would protect them against the violent course changes which would throw the complement about like dice in a cup.

“Aloft ten, right rudder nineteen,” said the captain.

The Menace leaped as the steering jets slammed her into her new course, as though she was unwilling to even countenance a thing which sought to avoid battle.

The screens of the enemy showed the action without much lag, and an instant later, the Saturn vessel was killing her speed on her old course and blasting into a new one which would again intercept the Menace.

The Saturnian, grudged Ensign Wayton, was well handled. Getting by her to engage the second was not going to be simple.

Lieutenant Carter leaned back in his deep command seat and apparently lost interest in the whole thing, for there was a vague look in his eyes and a relaxed expression about his mouth. Seeing this, the quartermaster let out a small explosive sigh, for he knew that they would engage the first enemy.

Actually, the captain was examining the vast panel of meters which gave the small bridge the appearance of being set in diamonds and gold. When he saw that all guns were ready, that all tubes were firing, that the air pressure was even throughout the ship and the new tanks broached to give the men more energy and courage, he turned slightly to the blue-and-gold figure in the other wing and said quietly, “We will engage, Mr. Wayton.”

Ensign Wayton’s hands tensed over the panel above his knees and then fluttered for an instant as though he needed to test the buttons which would fire the batteries.

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Ensign Wayton. He was breathing quickly, as though to supercharge his body with oxygen and hurl himself rather than flame projectiles at the enemy.

On the after bridge, before a similar but less complete board, Ensign Gates stood a lonely watch. He could look down the hatch just behind him and see the tense crew around the base of the Burmingham jet of the starboard engine. Ensign Gates swept his eyes back to the control panel, checked the telltales there and then glanced at his own quartermaster. The man, a heavyset sailor from Iowa, who still bore, after twenty years in space, the stamp of his state upon him, looked impersonally into the sphere compass which mirrored the stars and planets. He felt the officer’s eyes on him and edged his appearance with a sharp professionalism, as though this might communicate a greeting to the placid little ensign, of whom the quartermaster was fond in a shy, defiant way.

Ensign Gates grinned to himself, for he knew the meaning of the change in his quartermaster. He said something to the man, but the remark was engulfed in the crashing shudder of the port twenty-nines. They were engaged.

Time stood still and two vicious dots of ferocity slashed at each other in an immense black cube of vacuum. Shells burst like tiny flowers when they missed, or flashed like yellow charges of electricity when they struck. The Menace became filled with acridity. Somewhere in her a man was screaming an insane battle cry, and elsewhere blue blots of profanity hung thickly around guns and tubes and stoke ports.

Compartment 21 was holed and sealed from the rest of the ship between the beats of a chronometer. Compartment 16 turned into a blazing furnace and was sealed alike.

In the exact center of the ship, which was the after bridge, Ensign Gates placidly kept track of the enemy in the event that his firing panel had to take over. His active duty here was the overseeing of the engineering force, aft and below, but two tough chiefs were cursing themselves into a comfortable berth in Hades around the molten breeches of the tubes and needed no help.

“Hulled her!” barked the annunciator. Forward, Ensign Wayton sounded like a man cheering a baseball game rather than the director of that deadly blast. And then an instant later, “Hulled her!”

There was a crash topside and a man, bellowing agony and rage, hurled himself down a ladder. He was a mass of flames. The emergency squad member there smothered him swiftly in a blanket. Compartment 6 was sealed and everyone in her.

A small amount of Ensign Gates’ placidity left his face. They were being severely knocked about by a vessel which had a longer range and a faster steering system, which was landing four hits to their two.

“Hulled her!” cried Ensign Wayton, an invisible source of death forward and above. Evidently something had happened to the Saturnian, for an instant later, in a steady stream, Wayton began to chant the Menace’s hits.

Examining the panel before him, Ensign Gates believed that a lucky shot had penetrated the steering jets of the enemy, for he was now traveling in a straight line through the remaining three vessels of the convoy as if to help out the other Saturnian in the convoy’s destruction before this raging little wasp of space put an end to everyone. Just as the Menace flashed by a halted supply vessel, it bloomed into a sphere of scarlet death, the ammunition and highly explosive fuel igniting all at once.

Lieutenant Carter gazed calmly at the fleeing enemy, but the calmness was an official sort of thing, for there was sorrow for the supply ships and anger for the Saturnian snarled into a lump behind his gray eyes. Each time the Menace got a salvo home the captain twitched forward and a contraction of muscles above his mouth made him grin a split second at a time. His role was that of spectator so long as the ship was on her target, for then her steering was wholly between the gunnery officer and the helmsman.

With a blast close aboard, the Saturnian folded itself like a smashed tin can, and what had been an efficient fighting ship an instant before was now a scrap of volatilizing metal.

“Well done, Mr. Wayton,” said Lieutenant Carter.

Ensign Wayton turned glowing eyes and battle-reddened cheeks upon his captain and didn’t see him at all. He was already seeking the other Saturnian on his screen, was the gunnery officer, as though this first ship had merely served to calibrate his guns.

“Engage the second enemy, Mr. Wayton,” said Lieutenant Carter.

The Menace, bristling and sure of herself, shot a streak of power from her starboard bow and stabbed into a new course, three quick jets on the port bow and one below settling her into this.

Telepathically, Lieutenant Carter was aware of his enemy’s abrupt distaste for combat with him, now that the first Saturnian had been blasted from the action, but there was nothing in the action of the second vessel to indicate its dislike, for it turned now away from the supply vessel it had intended to spear, and streaked in a wide bank to bring her into a broadside parallel with the Menace.

Ensign Wayton adjusted his screen with the motor button and gave a swift check to the computator and then, because he was already ranged, sent all six guns of the port battery into a furious crescendo.

The Menace, dancing sideways from the recoils and being jabbed back by the adjusters, shivered with some vague premonition.

The Saturnian destroyer passed through the cone of concentration, sliding sideways to the Menace at a swift pace to throw off range and for some other purpose which was not to be fathomed for several seconds. The Saturnian’s guns were winking bright spots and her flame wake, as it turned to white powdery smoke, curved and feathered. She was a well-built little vessel, a few feet longer than the Menace and thicker through.

Lieutenant Carter scanned space with his detector but found no sign of reinforcement for the remaining destroyer.

The Menace shivered as she was knocked off course. The check board blinked and Compartment 26 vanished from it. Then, in terrifyingly swift order, the lights indicating Compartments 27, 28, 29 and 30 went black.

An annunciator above the captain’s post said in a calm voice, “Starboard magazine gone. Fire spreading.”

The quartermaster’s eyes flicked to the captain. Ensign Wayton hesitated for an instant over his firing buttons and then his gold stripe flashed as he located and aimed all three space torpedoes on the starboard. He launched them and said in a tightly casual voice to the quartermaster, “Roll a hundred and eighty.” Ensign Wayton, having no starboard batteries, was in action with the port.

Compartments 31, 25 and 36 went out in order. The air in the ship was unbreathable.

“Spacesuits,” said Lieutenant Carter into the annunciator. “All hands.”

The space torpedoes were sped, but only one had struck—this in the after section of the Saturnian, where it had caused a vast fan of bright fireworks. It had wiped out the stern balancing jets, but that vessel’s main propulsions were apparently without harm.

A new crash shook the Menace and the big light which marked the after bridge went black.

There was the smallest hint of concern in Lieutenant Carter’s voice. “Mr. Gates!”

Silence answered.

With steel bands on his nerves, his voice carefully steady, Lieutenant Carter said, “Mr. Gates. Please report.”

There was silence which hung for a heartbeat throughout the entire vessel.

Dead white, Ensign Wayton glanced at his captain. It was an appeal of dependence, shot without thought, an agonized hope that something could be done, a last belief in the impossibility that anything could ever happen to placid, easy Ensign Gates.

Lieutenant Carter did not look at his executive officer. In a flat, official voice he said, “Grapple the enemy.”

The heat was so intense in the dying Menace that men felt it through their spacesuits. They were unwilling to begin upon their private stores of oxygen until smoke was too thick in the hull to be breathed. Now they were in communication with helmet phones.

Space-garbed, a relief came to the quartermaster to allow him to climb into his suit. He had been standing there, strangling and sweating at the helm, and he would have stood there until he had melted if his relief had not come. The captain took the firing panel while Ensign Wayton slid into his suit. And then Lieutenant Carter dropped into his own ready covering. The captain gasped with relief as he sucked in air.

There was a clatter in the phones as arms were being issued out. Though the batteries were firing still, the helmet cut down their roaring to a tremble, which one felt with his body. There was something ominous and horrible in this silence for every man on the ship, for each was affected alike in the connection of the silence to a sudden surge of loneliness. For perhaps three minutes there was irregularity in the smoothness of the execution of duties, and then the first shock of quiet wore away and men began to talk to each other on the individual battery frequencies, began to swear anew, began to revile and damn this enemy who was destroying the sleek little Menace.

Still firing, Ensign Wayton was adjusting his ranges so as to sweep them in closer and closer to the attacking ship. The Saturnian was suffused with superiority and satisfaction, for the burning wake of the Menace was plainly visible as were the gaping holes in her skin, and this feeling, knowing it existed, Lieutenant Carter utilized by ordering unsteady leaps and veering as though the vessel were not quite under complete control.

Confident and disdainful, the Saturnian welcomed the closing. She even swept to starboard, little by little, to aid the action. It was her belief that gunnery was the only concern of the Menace and this, from a blasted vessel with only two guns still going, she could amply risk.

Further punishment awaited the Navy ship, for she could not come so close without being struck repeatedly. Her bow vanished to within twenty feet of the bridge and she was steering now with her guns alone, having two amidships port and one forward starboard, as well as her one-inch batteries on the bridge itself. She was rolling, tortured, nearly out of control, darting up and back and even tumbling when she came within a quarter of a mile of the Saturnian. And then what happened was swiftly done. The grapnels were still in action as they had been designed to be, and the one last ace of the gallant little vessel was played.

With a shuddering stab which tightened and held, the invisible claws of the Menace fastened upon the Saturnian and sucked them together with a swiftness which could only end in a numbing crash.

The shock of collision further crumpled the nose and drove a deep bulge into the side of the Saturnian. The latter had been panicked upon the instant of realization that something was amiss and had sought to charge away into space and get free, momentarily forgetful that she still possessed a superior force of men. But now that the adhesion was achieved, she ceased blasting and prepared for the fury which would come—which was already on its way.

Disintegrators in the hands of a burly CPO and his gang ate a hole into the Saturnian at the point of contact as though that hull consisted of cheese.

There was no more on the bridge for Lieutenant Carter. Here his responsibility was done. Ensign Wayton was already gone from the panel and the quartermaster, a huge machete he favored in close quarters gripped competently in his hand, was just vanishing through the hatch.

“Boarders away!” the captain barked at the annunciator in his helmet. He was through the hatch before the yell had ceased to beat against his own ears.

Ahead he saw a knot of men launching itself against another knot which barred the ragged circle of emptiness that led into the Saturnian. Flame was spitting back into the boarders from viciously wielded jets and here and there a spacesuit was giving way to the heat. And then Carter threw himself through the group, jet pistol in hand, and torpedoed himself into the mob just within the Saturnian. With a howl of approval, the sailors followed their captain.

The mass in which he found himself cut at him, shot at him, grabbed at him, and Carter, spinning around and around and firing a space clear, yelled defiantly but incoherently at them.

For several seconds the captain did not realize that the Saturnians had been too contemptuous to don spacesuits—if they had them—for, at best, it was difficult to use them at the guns. It had never occurred to the enemy destroyer that a thing as mad as a boarding would be attempted by such a mauled ship, particularly since the odds in men against such a ship would be three to one.

The curiously pointed heads of the repelling sailors ducked back from the fury of the pistol and then the mass swept deeper into the ship, evidently in receipt of an order which was calculated to draw the invaders into passageways where fast-firing small arms could be brought into play upon them.

Swirling about their captain, the seamen of the Menace cut down the stragglers and slipped in their blood. Few guns were here, for the sailors uniformly preferred steel when close quarters were to be had.

Suddenly the front rank of the invaders was swept back, driving their followers to cover. Two of the bodies were dead and projectiled toward the Menace by the fury of the fire they had met.

Ensign Wayton, a furiously moving monster in his spacesuit, shot to their fore, insane for an instant in the belief that his captain had been killed. When he saw Lieutenant Carter, he stopped screaming into his helmet. He halted.

“Spread into cover,” said Carter quickly. “Try to filter up into the ship through those hatches. But don’t press them closely and don’t risk your men.”

“Aye, aye, sir,” said Ensign Wayton. He spent no time in wondering why his captain went back through the crowd, for he had received his orders and he would carry them out to the last word and with his last breath. He looked around him at the shining walls of the gun room in which they had arrived and crisply told off a chief petty officer to burn out a section of its wall. If the passages were covered, there would be other ways of getting through the ship. He had an instant’s wonder about their fate, for he knew very well that this handful, less than twenty—less than fifteen, he saw with a shock—were pitted against at least fifty well armed in their own ship.

“Lively, now,” said Ensign Wayton.

As captain, Lieutenant Carter had no questions to answer or reasons to give. He was glad of that. He had a competent officer in Ensign Wayton, who knew what to do if anything happened to his commander. And this was a job Lieutenant Carter could not relegate to anyone.

He faltered for an instant on the threshold of the burning Menace. It was not the heat which repelled him so much as the unwillingness to see again this dying little vessel which had been, until such a short time before, a well-ordered, shipshape example of what a United States Navy destroyer should be. Here, for two years, he had gone through the routines, the problems and the alternating bursts of good and bad news which had marked this campaign. He had been one with an alive, sensitive creature of steel and chromium and flame, and to enter her now was like walking upon the corpse of one’s friend. He had a feeling that she should be left alone, as she was, to die, still facing the enemy.

Lieutenant Carter stepped over the jagged sill of the hole which had been carved in the Saturnian. The need of haste was upon him now, both because the possibility of his getting through the flames before him required speed and because this was a hideous job, the better to be done quickly.

The first blast struck him when a gun charge fired somewhere on the deck nearby. He was catapulted against the steel bulkhead and stood there for an instant in the swirling yellow gloom, shaking his head and trying to recall what he was about. Anxiously, he gripped at the elusive facts, for he was badly stunned. Then, with clearing sight, he sped aft and up through the curling tongues which had already stripped the paint from the walls.

There was no resemblance to the trim little Menace in this twisted, blackened mess through which he drove himself. He tried to think there was not. He knew there was.

He fumbled in his bag for a grenade as he lurched through the painful fog and when he had it in his thick glove, it required much of his nerve to keep it with him, for tongues of fire were reaching at it, heating it.

He found the ladder to the engine room. The grease had burned away, and because it was hot, his shoes stuck tenaciously to the rungs as though the Menace, lonely, was trying for the company of her master in a last shiver of her death throes.

Lieutenant Carter could feel a throb which did not come from flames. He worked toward it. He seemed to be taking forever for this task. The air in his tank was already scalding his lungs. The ship’s oxygen tanks must be feeding these flames, and if that were so, then they might explode at any instant. They were close above him now.

He found the generators, still running furiously in all this heat, fed by the treble-protected batteries which made a boarding possible after a ship was in ruins. He hauled a plate from the first layer of armor and then groped through the second and third. That he tried to pull the pin of the grenade with his teeth recalled him into a calm and orderly chain of thought. He plucked at the pin with his glove-thick fingers and got it out. He dropped it upon the batteries and in the same motion spun about and staggered toward the ladder. The heat inside his suit was so intense now that he had to will himself to breathe, and each time he did he flinched as he felt his lungs shrink away.

He clawed through a hatch and scrambled down a passageway. Blind and groping, he found the door in the yellow smoke and stumbled through.

The jagged hole in the side of the Saturnian was just ahead of him, he knew. He could not see it. He sought along the plates with anxious fingers.

Abruptly, he was tumbling forward, breath knocked out of him by another exploding charge. Dazedly, he lifted his helmeted head.

There was a great sighing rush of smoke and fire and a mighty hand snatched him from the deck and slammed him against plates. Groggily, he fought again to rise and then fought even harder, for it would have been very comforting to slump and go out, with the hands of his sailors supporting him.

The smoke of the Menace had filled this compartment of the Saturnian. But there was no smoke here now. And there was no air. The empty vacuum was greedy and swelled out the spacesuits to their normal proportions. Where the Menace had been, there was now only a gaping black hole. Once her generators, which kept the grapnels alive, had been shorted out, the furious efforts of upper gunners in the Saturnian had at last succeeded in blowing her away from the side.

Ensign Wayton was grinning through his transparent helmet when he had at last ascertained that his captain was safe and not seriously hurt.

Through the phones, Ensign Wayton said, “Sir, we have carved our way through the bulkheads into their after bridge. We have lost but three men. Your orders?”

“Yes,” said Lieutenant Carter. “Yes, of course.” He shook his head vigorously to clear it. “Well done, Mr. Wayton.” Then thought took over from mechanical form and with a glad surge he gripped his officer by the shoulder. “Quick! Open their compartments! Open their compartments!”

The idea flooded in upon Ensign Wayton. It was less than twenty feet up to the hole their jets had carved into the bridge deck. The one dead sailor from the Menace and the officer and two quartermasters of the Saturnian were bloated, even exploded, into no semblance of humanity or Saturnity. The CPO, who held the fort there belligerently, cut away at the bulkhead with his jet and suddenly a great gust of air and equipment shot him back.

Ensign Wayton steadied himself at the compartment board and began to open the switches. Some of them were frozen and he realized that the master panel was on the forward bridge. The compartments went shut and their lights began to go out. An officer up there was thinking fast. Ensign Wayton thought faster. He snatched at the auxiliary voice tube caps and yanked them. Into the holes he poured a dozen flame shots. A scream of air, loud enough to penetrate the thick space helmets, greeted his action. The hurricane which came through the voice tubes from the forward bridge knocked him backward. The master panel had been cut in. Suddenly all panel lights glowed on the auxiliary board as lack of air pressure on the forward bridge threw control aft. With swift hands, Ensign Wayton switched the compartments open throughout the ship and a shuddering wail went through the vessel, every plate trembling as the life poured from her. Those suits, denied the Saturnians to ensure their fighting to the last compartment, had cost her, finally and forever, her crew.

Lieutenant Carter, beside his officer, spoke on the general-order frequency of his helmet. “Attention. Proceed carefully through the vessel and clean out anyone left in her.” He turned to Ensign Wayton. “Take over, Mr. Wayton.”

Seating himself at the communicator, Lieutenant Carter’s eyes were vague with thoughtfulness. Absently, he commented that Washington’s onetime predilection for trading patents was not without benefit, for this communicator panel might have borne the stamp of Bell Radiophone for its similarity.

He knew he should feel jubilant, knew that he should savor this report to the battle fleet, knew that victory and triumph were personally his. But, somehow, he had ashes on his tongue and the words he tried to arrange in his mind were dull, gray things.

He was thinking now of the Menace. In the letdown which had followed this battle, he knew he would think of her more and more. Proud, arrogant little space can, smashed by the insensate hates of a space war, drifting a derelict, a battered sacrifice to her pride, a dead cold thing lost in the immensity, to be shunned by all vessels who sighted her as a navigational risk.

There was victory but there was no victory. He could not think of a proper report, one which would measure up to the little scrap of history they had made. This story would be told in wardrooms for many years, how the little space can took on two larger than she, how she had saved the supply vessels of the battle fleet and how she had died in the saving. Lieutenant Carter could not see the panel clearly and was annoyed with himself. He flung away from it and the reports which were coming to him now concerning the state of the Saturnian, reports which were good, had only a routine meaning. They reached his ears, his official mind, but they went no deeper.

There was a slight jar through the ship, a thing which required no explanation but which seemed to herald something electric. Lieutenant Carter glanced about him. He swung down the ladder to the lower gun room and glanced questioningly at the sentry stationed by the jagged hole in the Saturnian’s hull.

And then Carter froze.

For the hole was no longer empty! Had he dreamed that he got the Menace away from there? Had it been possible that she would not have herself abandoned?

There she was, the Menace! With her shattered bow pushed up into position and the fire-scarred depths of her clear of flame, she bumped gently against her conquered enemy.

And as Lieutenant Carter stared, he saw a man in a spacesuit moving toward him out of the shattered ship, followed by yet another.

Lieutenant Carter started and then quickly composed himself by pushing away the surge of elation which coursed through him.

The man in the spacesuit saluted. “Ensign Gates, sir. Fire shorted our conduits and cut us off. As soon as we dressed and opened the after bridge, we had things under control there. When the air went out of her hull, the fires stopped. She isn’t in such bad shape, sir. Your orders?”

Lieutenant Carter saw through a strange mistiness and carefully pitched his voice for calmness. “Very good, Mr. Gates. You will take charge of the repair parties as soon as we get air back into these ships.” He returned his engineering officer’s salute with unusual smartness.

Gently, the little Menace nudged her battered nose against the hull of her conquered enemy as though to remind the Saturnian that a ship, even when shot half to hell, should never be considered in any light save that of a dangerous adversary. For an instant Carter was startled into a belief that the Menace was laughing, and then he saw that the sound issued from his phones and was sourced aloft where Gates and Wayton were gladly greeting each other. It amused him to think that his ship could laugh, for the fact was most ridiculous. Or was it?—he asked himself suddenly. Or was it?