Briefly, but long enough. As Worsel had anticipated, that savage yank had, in the fraction of a second required for the Boskonian commander to recognize and to cut the tractors, been enough to bring the two inertialess war craft practically screen to screen. "Primaries! Blast!" Worsel hurled the thought even before his tractors snapped. He was in no mood for a long-drawn-out engagement. He _might_ be able to win with his secondaries, his needles, his tremendously powerful short-range stuff and his other ordinary offensive weapons, but he was taking no chances. Besides, the Boskonians might very well have primaries of their own by this time, and if they did his only chance was to use them first. His men knew what to do and would do it without further orders. A dozen or so of those hellishly irresistible projectors of sheer destruction lashed out as one. One! Two! Three! The three courses of Boskonian defensive screen scarcely winked as each, locally overloaded, flared through the visible into the black and went down. Crash! The stubborn fabric of the wall shield offered little more resistance before it, too, went down, exposing the bare metal of the Boskonian's hull--and, as is well known, any conceivable material substance simply vanishes, tracelessly, at the merest touch of such fields of force as those. Driving projectors carved away and main batteries silenced, Worsel's needle-beamers proceeded systematically to riddle every control panel and every lifeboat, to make of the immense space rover a completely helpless hulk. "Hold!" An observer flashed the thought. "Number Eight slip is empty--Number Eight lifeboat got away!" "Damnation!" Worsel, at the head of his armed and armored storming party, as furiously eager as they to come to grips with the enemy, paused briefly. "Trace it--or can you?" "I did. My tracers can hold it for fifteen minutes, perhaps twenty. No longer than twenty." Worsel thought intensely. Which had first call, ship or lifeboat? The ship, he decided almost instantly. Its resources were vastly greater; most of its personnel were probably practically unharmed. Given any time at all, they might very well be able to jury-rig a primary, and that would be bad--very bad. Besides, there were more people here; and even if, as was distinctly possible, the Boskonian big shot had abandoned his vessel and his crew in an attempt to save his own life, Worsel had plenty of time. "Hold that lifeboat," he instructed the observer. "Ten minutes is all we need here." * * * * *