"This being could have easily traveled by spacer from whence it came--as easily as we did!" The Panadur telepathed. "A small ship would be practically indetectable; besides, in view of our coming, even if seen it would have been taken for one of our ships. It occurs to me that this being may not have been created by another race, but _is in itself_ the very danger we have to face!" "No!" Bill Nardon exclaimed with utter conviction. "I caught it exploring my mind. In the instant that I contacted his, I _knew_ it was not independent ... it was _directed_. Three things only have I been unable to solve: It brought no weapons save its own murderous powers; it was purposely directed at me as if to destroy the only 'Correlating' mind in our League. And, most mysterious of all--in death, an ineffable sadness overlays its features, where the expression of bestial lust to kill should have been frozen in death." As Bill finished, the Martian delegate stood up: "I suppose my Government would be willing to release the Multi-Energon Screen for this expedition--retaining its secret, of course--provided," he flared, "provided Venus releases the necessary Vulcanite for the hull!" They glared at each other from both sides of the Council Table in ominous silence. The Panadur gazed at them with evident scorn. "Europa," he telepathed with a curious sort of sardonic benignity, "would be quite willing to supply radiant energy bombs!" The nearest thing to a smile seemed to flit over his delicate features, as he noted their reaction to the dreaded reminder. "And we will furnish plastics such as your worlds have never seen!" The man from Neptune spoke at last. The Amazon merely clanked her awful _Power-rapier_ significantly. II "No strikes yet!" Bill Nardon said softly, his eyes glued to the Electronoscope. "Sense anything, Freml?" "Only an outflow of thought-energy ... infinitely distant.... I don't quite know, Nardon. It's voiceless ... patternless, to me at least." The Panadur leader sounded uncertain. Even to his stupendous mind-power, the voiceless susurration, alive, malignant, was a tenuous thing sensed more than felt, directionless, part of the vast, galactic night that engulfed the _bait ship_ in blackness so velvety it was like smothering charred ash. The gigantic super-spacer in the building of which six planets had tried to outdo each other, knifed through the impalpable vibrations in its endless flight. Back of it, a tiny smouldering disk, like a glowing ruby-brooch, nearly three-quarters of a billion miles away, was the sun. Ahead, Saturn was slowly coming into position, and the great wings of light that were its rings shone with the glory of an eternal rainbow, paling the immense crystalline jewel that was Pluto.