Yes, as the machines had told us, this galaxy of theirs contained hosts of dying suns, old, red and cold. They greatly outnumbered the suns still hot with life. Small wonder that the machines had sought for new, young suns to replenish their waning universe! "I see some of our own suns in there!" Korus Kan exclaimed. "The ones they took from us." "Yes, I see them," Lacq Larus said. "If all goes well, we'll soon be taking them back." As we neared the galaxy of the machines, Lacq Larus gave one hundred dark stars their orders. Thirty-nine of us were assigned to hook onto the stolen suns and tow them back at once toward our own galaxy. The other sixty-one, including Lacq Larus' dark star and my own also, were to wreak all the destruction in their power upon the machines' galaxy. We drew steadily nearer and soon were very close to the galaxy ahead. There was no sign that any of the machines in it were aware of our approach. "They can't have seen us coming," Jhul Din commented. "They've no idea we could come at all," I responded. "They're probably busy placing the last suns they took from us. Our dark stars would be hardly visible to them." Soon came the voice of Lacq Larus in final orders. "We are now about to enter this galaxy," he said. "Remember your duties and let nothing stop you." Like rushing spheres of blackness our hundred dark stars raced into the galaxy of the machines. Once inside, we separated. The thirty-nine assigned to retrieve our thirty-nine stolen suns sped directly, each toward one of those suns. The rest of us darted forward on our dark stars after the leading one of Lacq Larus. Our purpose was to destroy as many of that galaxy's suns as possible by dragging them into one another. Before the machines that peopled their worlds were aware of our presence we had begun. Lacq Larus drove his dark star toward a small white sun at that galaxy's edge, hooked onto it with his attractive beam, and towed it quickly toward a blue sun off to the left. When near the blue sun he released the one he towed and it rushed on of its own accord, crashed head-on into the blue star. The two colliding suns melted into a cloud of flame that whiffed away the worlds of both of them in an instant. While Lacq Larus was thus employed, the rest of us were not idle. I had driven our own dark star toward a large red sun some distance inside, and now I yelled for Korus Kan to hook onto it with our attractive beam. He did so, and as I put on power we dragged the red sun after us toward a double star not far from it. We cast loose just before we reached the double star. I shot our dark star past it, and the red sun, drifting after us, struck the twin star squarely. The cosmic outrush of flame from that collision almost reached our own hurtling world before we got out of reach. * * * * *