"They're just ahead!" he exclaimed. Then, into the tube--"All batteries ready, Hartley, and use the port guns when we bank." "Lord, look at that fellow!" breathed Calden as he too stared ahead. "He sure can handle a rocket--the Hawk can't get his guns on him!" Far ahead of them in the void the scene of combat to which they had been summoned was rushing into view. A tiny and shining one-man rocket was dodging and twisting and circling in space, with its firing-tubes flaming first on one end and then on the other to keep it in an ever-changing course. And around it, like a great grim pike rushing a shining chub, was circling and swooping a long dead-black rocket of the same size almost as the Earth-Guard craft. It was the dreaded black rocket of the Hawk, reputed the swiftest craft in space. The grim black rocket, whirling and dipping with a swiftness of maneuver astounding in a ship of its size, was endeavoring to bring the twisting little craft that evaded it into the line of its guns. As their own ship thundered down on the scene, Evans and Calden saw the one side of the Hawk's rocket stabbing forth a half-score slender jets of blue fire as its electric-guns blasted toward the smaller craft. But the latter had shot upward in time to avoid the fire, and in the next moment the Earth-Guard rocket was rushing down upon the ebon attacker. "Fire!" As Hartley's voice below shouted the order, the Earth-Guard ship poured a deadly fire toward the black rocket of the Hawk. But at the very instant of firing, with a swiftness born of a hundred space-fights, the Hawk's rocket had shot upward. "Missed him!" Calden cried. "Look out--he's tailing--!" "Over quick!" Evans exclaimed. "Let him have the stern guns, Hartley!" For in the instant after shooting upward to avoid their fire, the rocket of the Hawk had flashed back down on them in the familiar maneuver of "tailing," using all the firing-tubes placed in its nose for braking purposes to halt it and reverse it in a flash. Evans had a lightning glimpse of the great black shape rushing stern-foremost down on them. Then he felt his own rocket dip and dive like light as Calden's hands flashed on the firing-levers, and for a moment Evans saw the white-lit pilot-house of the other rocket, with the tense figures inside it, before it whirled out of view. He sensed rather than saw the blast of the Hawk's guns above them as they dived just in time to avoid the deadly missiles. * * * * * Evans heard shouting voices from their own gun-rooms and had no need to cry to Calden the next order, for already the other was straightening out their course and sending their ship soaring upward again. But the long black craft of the Hawk was gone! After that one swift swoop and blow it had flashed off the space-lane into the uncharted void, and they glimpsed it only as a dwindling point of fire that vanished in the next instant.