The Gray Lensman sent his sense of perception abroad. Twenty more of them--the ship wasn't very big. Ten aft, armored. Six forward, also armored. Four, unarmored, in the control room. That control room was poison; he'd go aft first. He searched around--surely they'd have dureum space-axes? Oh, yes, there they were. He hefted them, selected one of the correct weight and balance. He strode down the companionway to the wardroom. He flung the door open and stepped inside. His first care was to blast the communicator panels with his DeLameters. That would delay the mustering of reinforcements. The control room couldn't guess, at least for a time, that one man was setting out to capture their ship single-handed. His second, ignoring the beams of hand-weapons splashing refulgently from his screens, was to weld the steel door solidly to the jamb. Then, sheathing his projectors, he swung up his ax and went grimly to work. He thought fleetingly of how nice it would be to have VanBuskirk, that dean of all ax-men, at his back; but he wasn't too old or too fat to swing a pretty mean ax himself. And, fortunately, these Boskonians, here in their quarters, didn't have axes. They were heavy, clumsy, and for emergency use only; they were not a part of the regular uniform, as upon Valeria. The space-ax! Formerly that weapon had been forged from the hardest and toughest of alloy steels. For years, however, it had been made universally from dureum. A deceptive little thing, truly! A dainty-looking affair a little larger than a broad-hatchet. Unlike a hatchet, however, it had a mass of some twenty pounds and was equipped with a yard-long, double-gripped shaft. A sharply tapered spear-end for thrusting, gouging, and stabbing; a wickedly curved, needle-pointed beak for rending and tearing; a flatly rounded, razor-sharp blade capable of shearing through neo-carballoy as cleanly as a scalpel through butter. The first foe swung up his DeLameter involuntarily as Kinnison's ax swept down. When the curved blade, driven as viciously as the Lensman's strength could drive it, struck the ray-gun it did not even pause. Through it it sliced, the severed halves falling to the floor. The dureum inlay of the glove held, and glove and ax smashed together against the helmet. The Boskonian went down with a crash; but, beyond a broken arm or some such trifle, he wasn't hurt much. And no armor that a man had to carry around could be made of solid dureum. Hence, Kinnison reversed his weapon and swung again, aiming carefully at a point between the inlay strips. The ax's wicked beak tore through steel and skull and brain, stopping only with the sharply ringing impact of dureum shaft against dureum stripping.