Charleston's fat face was covered with perspiration. "Jimmie," he said, almost inarticulately, "something is very screwy around here. Maybe I'd better contact Pali-Vanyi and find out what's going on." Cutting in the transmitter, Charleston began to bark excitedly: "Sy 2700 calling Pali-Vanyi Base--" Simultaneously a torpedo lanced from the destroyer's tubes, darting straight at the spaceyacht. Charleston keyed in the underjets to avoid it, praying fervently the while. A shudder ran through the yacht; then it was running as smoothly as before. "What happened?" Charleston cried, his eyes darting feverishly from meter to meter. "The torpedo ripped away our broadcast antenna," Jimmie said slowly. "We can't contact Pali-Vanyi now!" "Damn them, damn them!" Charleston murmured. "We'll follow them; we'll find out what it's all about!" "Yes, sir," Jimmie said, but his whole body was quivering and he was wishing he was far, far away. III Down in the radio beam station, Wagner, Ward and a very unsteady Portiz surveyed each other in stunned dismay for about ten seconds. Fred Ward was struggling to put into speech that which he felt within. Here was crisis. Here was an intermingling of human and mechanical failings which had built up almost to the point of nervous dissolution in the men concerned. Probably of secondary importance now was the fact that two terrestrial cruisers were nearing perihelion at the sun; they depended absolutely on the keyed radio wave which would leap across their trajectory and crackle in their attentive receivers. But that keying device was out of commission and in all that great bank of two hundred keyers there was not another silent. There was not another which they could safely adjust to the cruisers' course without imperiling the safety of some other craft. Over in Pali-Vanyi proper were some of the greatest political minds of Earth and Venus, closeted within a great hall whose entrance was barred, whose televisorphonic connections were cut off. It would take at least fifteen minutes to gain access to that hall, once reached, and probably another ten minutes to evacuate the great hall and get them to a place of comparative safety. Up above a great Martian destroyer was diving down into Venus' mists, doubtless riding the radio range beam straight down toward the port. Its objective was obvious: the convention hall. The radio range beam transmitter could not be cut off since there were a dozen ships due to hit atmosphere within the next few minutes. Six of them had bucked a Perseid meteor shower coming out of Earth and were low on fuel; it was imperative that they follow the beam down to Pali-Vanyi for a one-try landing. The excessive consumption of fuel in an atmosphere was prohibitive of their cruising around until the destroyer could be apprehended by Patrol ships and driven away. The beam had to be maintained!