_Chapter_ _Page_ 1 Catastrophe 7 2 Cloud Blasts a Vortex 15 3 Cloud Loses an Arm 24 4 “Storm” Cloud on Deka 34 5 The Boneheads 48 6 Driving Jets are Weapons 54 7 The Blaster Acquires a Crew 70 8 Vesta the Vegian 77 9 Trouble on Tominga 89 10 Janowick 99 11 Joan the Telepath 106 12 Vesta Practices Spaceal 115 13 Games Within Games 123 14 Vesta the Gambler 138 15 Joan and Her Brains 147 16 Vegian Justice 158 17 The Call 171 18 Cahuita 183 _Chapter 1_ ▂▂▂▂▂▂CATASTROPHE SAFETY DEVICES that do not protect. “Unsinkable” ships that, before the days of Bergenholm and of atomic and cosmic energy, sank into the waters of Earth. More particularly, safety devices which, while protecting against one agent of destruction, attract magnet-like another and worse. Such as the armored cable within the walls of a wooden house. It protects the electrical conductors within it against accidental external shorts; but, inadequately grounded, it may attract and upon occasion has attracted the stupendous force of lightning. Then, steel armor exploding into incandescence inside walls and ceilings, that house’s existence thereafter is to be measured in minutes. Specifically, four lightning rods. The lightning rods protecting the chromium, glass, and plastic home of Neal Cloud. Those rods were adequately grounded, with copper-silver cables the size of a big man’s forefinger; for Neal Cloud, Doctor of Nucleonics, knew his lightning and was taking no chances whatever with the safety of his wife and children. He did not know, did not even suspect, that under certain conditions of atmospheric potential and of ground-magnetic stress his perfectly-designed and perfectly-installed system would become a super-powerful attractor for flying vortices of atomic disintegration. So now Neal Cloud, nucleonicist, sat at his desk in a strained, dull apathy. His face was a yellowish-gray white, his tendoned hands gripped rigidly the arms of his chair. His eyes, hard and lifeless, stared unseeingly past the small, three-dimensional block portrait of all that had made life worth living.