He nodded grimly, swerving the ship a little, and now straight toward the red star we raced, Jhul Din and I gazing out with him toward it as we flashed on, and then behind to where the gleaming three ships of the invaders drove after us. Swiftly they were overtaking us, two close behind us and the remaining one a little behind the two, but ahead the crimson star was filling almost all the heavens, now, a great sea of fiery red flame that stretched above and beneath us, ahead, as though occupying all the firmament. Its glare was awful, now, for we were racing straight in toward the mighty corona of it, the glowing outer atmosphere of radiant heat about it in which, I knew, no ship, however heat-resistant, could live for more than a moment. On we raced, our cruiser creaking and swaying still from the effects of the collision with the ship we had smashed into, but flashing on with unabated speed. Behind us, the three gleaming shapes of our pursuers were following with unslackened speed, too, gradually drawing nearer, the two foremost of those ships just behind us, now. Another moment and their death-beams would stab toward us, and though we might destroy one or even two of them the other would surely destroy us before we could turn to it, I knew. The heat, too, of the great star before us was penetrating into our ship, and full before us, not a dozen million miles ahead, glowed the great corona. On we flashed--on--on--and then, just as we were about to burst into the terrible, glowing corona, just as the two ships close behind us sprang closer to stab with their beams toward us, Korus Kan jerked the controls suddenly back, and instantly our ship shot upward in a great vertical rush, while beneath, before they could see and follow our change of course, the two racing oval ships pursuing us had flashed on and into the mighty glare of the corona. Then we glimpsed them shriveling, twisting, vanishing, in the awful heat there, while our own cruiser turned now away from the red sun.