They were too many. Because of the nearness of her sisters, the cannonading ship had ceased firing and had brought about to join the boarding fight; and there could be no running. He, Cutlass, had never given the order to-- He shook his head. This had happened before. Somehow it had happened before and yet of course that was impossible. It was his rage at the English and their price upon him that was addling his thoughts. And with half her rigging torn asunder, the _Talon_, a sorry sight now, could not run her own length. In seconds the _Talon's_ decks were slippery with blood from poop to forecastle; Cutlass drew and fired his pistols with his left hand as he crossed swords with his right--three of his attackers went down howling in agony, and the swordsman he had killed outright with a ball in the face had been replaced by two more. "We've come for your head, Robbin Cutlass!" "Then you'll parry this to get it!" Cutlass gritted savagely. The Englishman was a split-second late, and the corsair's sword split his throat from chin to collar-bone. But they were too many. _Was it to be ever so?_ Desperately, blood coursing from a reopened old wound in his left shoulder which for some reason had never healed completely. Cutlass groped for the last of his pistols. His clawing fingers slipped on something hard at his waist. He must--must-- _Press it!_ * * * * * _Far away, in another Space and in another Time, an old man's eyes glittered. There was the signal, but the chances were that young Robbin Cutlass hadn't given it from sheer boredom! Swiftly, his short, thick fingers flicked the breadth of a time-warp quadrant, altered the mass and continuum ratios as great banks of machinery seemed to float in their own blue-green glow and throbbed with the mighty power of the Sun itself._ _But it was true, there were some things even science could not change...._ * * * * * His head hurt. The Kid and Gonzales rode at a walk beside him, and the Kid was complaining about the heat again. Gonzales told him to shut up unless he could think of a better way to make a living. Cutlass gestured with a nod of his head. "Up there," he said. The trio reined off the bend of the road and almost at a leisurely pace wended their way up the gentle rise of a hill a scant 50 yards distant. "They ain't many trees," the Kid grumbled. "Ain't gotta be," Cutlass said. "I steer you wrong yet?" "Reckon not." "Then button up and listen." Idly, he stretched out his right arm, half-leaned from his saddle, and plucked the square of weather-beaten paper from the trunk of a scrubby cottonwood. "Long as y'do what I say, you'll keep seein' these. Soon's you stop, they won't have to be printin' no more." "They raise the price a leetle," Gonzales said. "But they still don't draw our peectures worth a damn!"