And he was. "Every power unit out there--suits and boats both--drained," Hilton reported. "_Completely_ drained. Get some help out there fast!" * * * * * In an enormous structure deep below the surface of a far-distant world a group of technicians clustered together in front of one section of a two-miles long control board. They were staring at a light that had just appeared where no light should have been. "Someone's brain-pan will be burned out for this," one of the group radiated harshly. "That unit was inactivated long ago and it has not been reactivated." "Someone committed an error, Your Loftiness?" "Silence, fool! Stretts do not commit errors!" * * * * * As soon as it was clear that no one had been injured, Sawtelle demanded, "How about it, Hilton?" "Structurally, it was high-alloy steel. There were many bulges, possibly containing mechanisms. There were drive-units of a non-Terran type. There were many projectors, which--at a rough guess--were a hundred times as powerful as any I have ever seen before. There were no indications that the thing had ever been enclosed, in whole or in part. It certainly never had living quarters for warm-blooded, oxygen-breathing eaters of organic food." Sawtelle snorted. "You mean it never had a crew?" "Not necessarily...." "Bah! What other kind of intelligent life is there?" "I don't know. But before we speculate too much, let's look at the tri-di. The camera may have caught something I missed." It hadn't. The three-dimensional pictures added nothing. "It probably was operated either by programmed automatics or by remote control," Hilton decided, finally. "But how did they drain all our power? And just as bad, what and how is that other point source of power we're heading for now?" "What's wrong with it?" Sawtelle asked. "Its strength. No matter what distance or reactant I assume, nothing we know will fit. Neither fission nor fusion will do it. It has to be practically total conversion!" II The _Perseus_ snapped out of overdrive near the point of interest and Hilton stared, motionless and silent. Space was full of madly warring ships. Half of them were bare, giant skeletons of steel, like the "derelict" that had so unexpectedly blasted away from them. The others were more or less like the _Perseus_, except in being bigger, faster and of vastly greater power. Beams of starkly incredible power bit at and clung to equally capable defensive screens of pure force. As these inconceivable forces met, the glare of their neutralization filled all nearby space. And ships and skeletons alike were disappearing in chunks, blobs, gouts, streamers and sparkles of rended, fused and vaporized metal.