"That's right," Greg agreed, "but we're ready for them now. Our ship left the Belgium factories several hours ago. The _Comet_ towed it out in space and it's waiting for us now. In a few hours the _Comet_ will be here to pick us up." "War in space," said Russ, musingly. "That's what it will be." "Chambers and his gang won't fight according to any rules. There'll be no holds barred, no more feeble attempts like the one they tried tonight. From now on we need a base that simply can't be located." "The ship," said Russ. _CHAPTER FOURTEEN_ The _Invincible_ hung in space, an empty, airless hull, the largest thing afloat. Chartered freighters, leaving their ports from distant parts of the Earth, had converged upon her hours before, had unloaded crated apparatus, storing it in the yawning hull. Then they had departed. Now the sturdy little space-yacht, _Comet_, was towing the great ship out into space, 500,000 miles beyond the orbit of the Moon. Slowly the hull was being taken farther and farther away from possible discovery. Work on the installation of the apparatus had started almost as soon as the _Comet_ had first tugged at the ponderous mass. Leaving only a skeleton crew in charge of the _Comet_, the rest of the selected crew had begun the assembly of the mighty machines which would transform the _Invincible_ into a thing of unimaginable power and speed. The doors were closed and sealed and the air, already stored in the ship's tanks, was released. The slight acceleration of the _Comet's_ towing served to create artificial weight for easier work, but not enough to handicap the shifting of the heavier pieces of apparatus. An electric cable was run back from the little yacht and the _Invincible_ took her first breath of life. The work advanced rapidly, for every man was more than a mere engineer or spacebuster. They were a selected crew, the men who had helped to make the name of Gregory Manning famous throughout the Solar System. First the engines were installed, then the two groups of five massive power plants and the single smaller engine as an auxiliary supply plant for the light, heat, air. The accumulators of the _Comet_ were drained in a single tremendous surge and the auxiliary generator started. It in turn awoke to life the other power plants, to leave them sleeping, idling, but ready for instant use to develop power such as man never before had dreamed of holding and molding to his will. Then, with the gigantic tools these engines supplied ... tools of pure force and strange space fields ... the work was rapidly completed. The power boards were set in place, welded in position by a sudden furious blast of white hot metal and as equally sudden freezing, to be followed by careful heating and recooling till the beryl-steel reached its maximum strength. Over the hull swarmed spacesuited men, using that strange new power, heat-treating the stubborn metal in a manner never before possible.