One shell drilled in through the fore port of Hoagland's ninth ship and the velocity of the ship carried the racketing bit of metal back through the guts of the ship where it glanced viciously from wall to wall. Lights went dark and then the ship lost drive as the round hit some of the vital wiring. Inert, the ship continued on its course freely, curving down towards Alpha IV to land with a blossom of flame as the driving-chambers blew their atomic load. Space flashed bright as one of Huston's craft rammed its enemy. A flare of molten metal splashed wide and bits of solid, jagged hull sprinkled space with deadly missiles that caused the following ships to veer wide. A third ship exploded violently as one of Huston's shells drilled the drive chamber. One of Huston's ships ran into one of the jags of hull and went inert. The pilot fought it while the crew struggled with the ruined wiring. Arcs and flares filled the ship as the air dropped in pressure within the ship, then the electrical arcs went out as vacuum came. Struggling against no-gravity, the crew floated in the ship, hurling tools to direct themselves, tossing cables across the hull-spaces. A dim light came on as the ship dropped toward the ice cap, then the drive returned part way. The pilot fought the ship down to a racketing, sliding crash that hurled up a fountain of chipped ice and strewed the furrow with fragments of ship. Those of the crew who survived the crash leaped from the ship through jagged holes in the hull and raced for the relay station. All of them remembered one main tenet of warfare: Eventually, no matter how outrageous or how efficient grow the mechanized weapons of warfare, it is the man with the bared knife that subdues his enemy on the contested ground! Revolvers shattered the locked door of the station and the men took shelter inside. They might be sitting ducks for a bombing run. If their pilots could stop Hoagland's bombing runs, Hoagland's men would eventually have to land and make for the station on foot. Then they would be ready! The downward circle of Hoagland's flight circled the entire planet, crossed below the antipodal ice-cap and came roaring across the planet just above the stratosphere. Huston was waiting for them and the two flights plowed into one another head on. Now both flights were facing each other and the space-rifles vomited their rain of solid shells. Had this been a battle between trained and well-armed space forces, it would have been sheer carnage. But the space rifles were not radar-trained nor electronically fired. These were ships of commerce locked in combat as deadly as man against man, but lacking the finer techniques of modern mass-killing. Ship after ship trained on one another and raced towards one another on dead course.