I gazed out toward it and in a moment I, too, had seen it--a dim, faint little glow of red light, flickering there in the darkness of space before us and to the left. Steadily that little glow was broadening, deepening, though, while our temperature-dials were recording swiftly rising heat outside as we neared it. There was no need to change the course of our fleet, though, since the heat-region lay toward the left and our present course would take us safely past its right edge. It was, perhaps, the same region into which we had blundered on our outward flight, and with interest we watched it as our great fleet shot forward and along its outer edge. It was a vast area of glowing crimson light to our left, now. A terrific furnace of heat-vibrations loosed by the collision of the great ether-currents through which we were plunging. Then, just as our fleet was speeding directly past the mighty, glowing region, along its outer edge, our prow turned slowly toward the left, toward the heat-region, and then we were racing straight inward toward the region's fiery heart! For an instant I stared in stunned amazement as our ship shifted thus, then whirled around to the Spican. "Jhul Din!" I exclaimed. "The controls! The ship's heading into the heat-region!" But already he was twisting frantically at the controls, and now he looked up wildly toward me. "The ship doesn't answer the controls!" he cried. "It's heading straight inward--and the ships behind us--!" And he pointed up toward the space-chart, where I saw now that as they rushed on, the thousands of ships behind us were shifting their course like our own and racing into the heat-region after us--racing in like us toward a fiery death! Then, as I gazed stupefied up toward the space-chart, I saw something else, saw that inches to the left of our fleet on the chart, away on the other side of the glowing heat-region from us, there hung a half-thousand ships, that showed on the chart as a close-massed swarm of dots, hanging there motionless. And as I saw them I understood, and with understanding a great shout broke from me. "Attraction-ships!" I cried. "It's an ambush the serpent-fleet left for us if we followed them! Attraction-ships hanging there on the other side of the heat-region and pulling our ships toward themselves, and toward and into that region!"