"No, no," he cried out, talking down their thoughts. "It isn't a weapon. It's a sport we play back on Earth. I--it--the bat is used to hit a ball. Morka Kar didn't know that. He thought it just a club. "Luckily, I could call my shot. A straight fast ball. Not a curve. A straight--" Jonathan blinked. He stopped, choking; eyes wide. "Maybe," he whispered. "Maybe--" The others grew quiet, watching. They felt his intense excitement, saw his hands quiver, and the way his lips twitched. Adatha Za clung to his arm and her eyes were pools of purple hunger. It wasn't too fantastic--yet. It all depended on straight lines and curves, and whether a straight line can ever be curved. The shortest distance between two points. If the straight line could be moved to turn, then he was wrong. But if he were right! If this type of straightness _could not_ curve, then it might conceivably eat its way through a universe which was based on something that should curve: light. * * * * * Dr. Wooden and he had made strides in their experiments on light rays derived from calcatryte. They had explored the quantum theory, had forced homogenous light against a metal plate and seen the electrons it extracted from it. This light energy had been partially turned into the kinetic energy of the bombarded electrons of metal. From this it had been a step upward in discovering that calcatryte yielded a photon shower of such terrific concentration that it ate right through the metal plate; had given no evidence of stopping until they had constructed the plasticite screen: pure black, coated with a fine dust of calcatryte itself. They had no way of knowing whether the rays stopped at the screen, exactly. They might go on and on. And if they ate through metal, releasing the electrons that composed it--they might eat through the universe! Jonathan shuddered and looked around him. He knew his course, now. But to prove it-- He had to go through the flames! "You proclaimed that the winner of the mental monomachy would go through the flames, Shar Bytu," he said. "As winner, and as representative of Earth, I claim that right." Shar Bytu looked at him and his eyes were like flecks of cold moonlight. Suddenly, they twinkled. "The right is yours, Earthling. And something tells me that you may, at long last, be the one to succeed. I read it in your mind. Yes, your theory is a good one. To think that menace came from Earth. From little, uncivilized, barbaric Earth." He waddled away, his ponderous reptilian head moving from side to side. Adatha Za pressed her hot cheeks against Jonathan's chest. Her voice was low, troubled: "How will you fight the flames, Jonathan? What weapon is there that can destroy them?" "No weapon under all the stars and all the suns can destroy the shadows, Adatha Za. They are alien. The only hope there is--is to shut them off."