There was a terrific, rending shock as our great prow tore into the transparent-walled nose of the enemy ship, and beneath that shock we saw the whole fore portion of the oval ship crumpling up and collapsing, reeling away a shattered wreck of metal. Our own cruiser rocked and swayed crazily at the collision, and for a moment it seemed that we too were doomed, but the next our battered ship leapt forward, and in an instant was free of the masses of oval ships that had encircled us, and was driving now in toward the galaxy's suns, with a score of the oval ships behind in hot pursuit. In we drove, speeding now past the great Cancer cluster as we flashed at our utmost speed into the galaxy, its great ball of gathered suns flaring in the black heavens to our left as we sped inward. Behind came our pursuers, racing on close after us; and now, glancing back beyond them, I saw the whole mighty fleet of the invaders, still fully three thousand ships in number, moving in toward the galaxy also, toward the great Cancer cluster, with its swarming suns and thronging worlds, saw the great fleet slowing, slanting down toward those suns, those worlds, and knew then that these invaders, having annihilated the galaxy's fleet, were settling upon the suns and worlds of the Cancer cluster as a first foothold in our universe, a base from which they could subdue all that universe. Then their fleet had vanished from our distance-windows as we fled on, and of the score of our pursuers all but three had turned back to rejoin that fleet. The three remaining ships, though, drove straight on our track, and swiftly were overhauling us, though inside the galaxy they dared not use all their tremendous speed. Yet remorselessly after us they came, and I knew that moments more would see our end unless we could escape them. Directly ahead of us, though, there flamed a small crimson sun, a dying, planetless star not far inward from the Cancer cluster, largening each moment before us as we drove on toward it with terrific speed. As I saw it a last plan flashed through my brain, and I turned to Korus Kan. "Head straight toward that sun!" I told him. "It's our only chance--to get in close and lose them in its corona!"