But tensely watching Kathryn gnawed her lip. Should she tell him, or control him, or not? No. She wouldn't--she couldn't--yet. Dad could figure out that pilot room trap without her help--and she herself, with all her power of brain, could not visualize with any degree of clarity the menace which was--which _must_ be--at the tube's end or even now rushing along it to meet that Boskonian ship. Kinnison met the oncoming six and vanquished them. By no means as easily as he had conquered the others, since they had been warned and since they also now bore space-axes, but just as finally. Kinnison did not consider it remarkable that he escaped practically unscathed--his armor was battered and dinged up, cut and torn, but he had only a couple of superficial wounds. He had met the enemy where they could come at him only one at a time; he was still the master of any weapon known to space warfare; it had been at no time evident that any outside influence was interfering with the normally rapid functioning of the Boskonians' minds. He was full of confidence, full of fight, and far from spent when he faced about to consider what he should do about that control room. There was plenty of stuff in there--tougher stuff than he had met up with so far. Kathryn in her speedster gritted her strong white teeth and clenched her shapely hands into hard little fists. This was bad--very, _very_ bad--and it was going to get worse. Closing up fast, she uttered a bitter and exceedingly unladylike expletive. Couldn't Dad _see_--couldn't the dumb darling _sense_--that he was apt to run out of time almost any minute now? She fairly writhed in an agony of indecision; and indecision, in a Third-Stage Lensman, is a rare phenomenon indeed. She wanted intensely to take over, but if she did, was there any way this side of Palain's purple hells that she could cover up her tracks? There was none--yet. VIII. But Kinnison's mind, while slower than his daughter's and in many respects less able, was sure. The four Boskonians in the control room were screened against his every mental force and it was idle even to hope for another such lucky break as he had just had. One was QX and to be received thankfully, but coincidences simply did not happen. They were armored by this time and they had both machine rifles and semiportable projectors. They were entrenched; evidently intending to fight a delaying and defensive battle, knowing that if they could keep the aggressor at bay until the pseudospace of the tube had been traversed, the Lensman would not have a chance. Armed with all they could use of the most powerful mobile weapons aboard and being four to one, they undoubtedly thought that they could win easily enough.