Paul had no way of knowing whether Toby had hit a snag somewhere along the line. Again he thought of the short-term experiments that had been made and smiled unhappily. He would have liked to check Toby, whether his watch was properly set; if his receiver was turned on. But once checked, what was to prevent Toby from falling ill, his watch from running down, the blowup of some bit of vital equipment, the failure of something basic like a power supply filter condenser, or even to prevent Toby from turning off the Z-wave receiver just because the slight speaker hiss annoyed the man, running continuously for better than a week. All Paul could do was to keep on calling. His first attempt had been steady for a half hour. He waited for a half hour and then called again: "Toby! Toby Morrow. Can you hear me?" Paul went into a ramble of talk, just to keep the circuit alive. He recited poetry, discussed physics, and finally he broke into song: "_Round and round and round go the deuterons, Round and round the magnet swings 'em Round and round and round go the deutrons. Look at those neutrons pouring out there!_" Then the Z-wave chattered into life. Paul jumped with excitement and reached for the volume control to bring the roar of voice down to a recognizable level. "That's a lousy program we've got." "Well, turn it off." "Better we should shut the station off!" "Hey! This is Paul Grayson--" "We know who it is," came the sharp reply. At the same instant a powerful light flashed into the viewport, and Paul looked to see a spacer bearing down on him. As he watched, there was a flash of orange flame at the nose. He did not see the shell. But whether it was one of the standard solid rounds used to check whether a planet or meteor were contraterrene, or whether it was loaded with high explosives, a four-inch projectile is nothing to be hit with in space. His hand reached for the high drive, Paul could outrun any projectile that way, once his ship got started. But another spacecraft passed at his side close enough to count the rivets, and as it passed him it began strewing space with a myriad of baseball sized chunks of solid matter. To start the high drive now would be death in a matter of seconds. The first few would be pushed aside, the next batch would ricochet from his hull. The batch he met just before he reached the high-space velocity would come through like a shotgun blast shattering a brick of cheese. "Turn off the Z-wave!" came the command. "Turn it off or the next shot will drill dead center." Paul hesitated. Another flare came from the oncoming ship and the shell drilled deep into Paul's spacecraft, among the machinery and stores. Bulkhead doors clanged shut, the whistle of air rose and then fell as some compartment or other down in the bowels of the ship blasted its air out through a jagged hole in the hull. "Next one will be through your department!"