Down, down--that fall seemed endless as I rushed down through space, but unimpeded as I was by air-resistance it was but an instant before I had slammed down on the ship's broad back, lying motionless for an instant and then rising carefully to a sitting position. Just above me hung our racing cruiser, the opening in its bottom directly overhead, and in another moment Korus Kan had followed me, striking the ship's back beside me while I gripped him and held him tightly. Then came one of the crew, and another, and another, until in a moment the last of them was dropping down among us, Jhul Din alone remaining above. He stepped toward the opening, to lower himself and drop down to us likewise, but even as he did so I saw the great walls of the cruiser above collapsing and buckling inward as they gave at last. I motioned frantically to Jhul Din as the walls collapsed about him, saw him give one startled glance around, and then as the cruiser's sides crumpled up about him he ran forward and leapt cleanly through the opening in the floor, hurtling down toward us and striking full in our midst, just as the crumpled cruiser above, the power of its generators gone with its collapse, jerked sharply out of sight toward the crimson sun behind, hurtling away from us a twisted wreck of metal. * * * * * It was with something of a tightness in my throat that I saw the wreck of our familiar, faithful ship drive away from us, but I turned toward our own desperate situation. We were clinging to the back of the great oval ship as it drove on toward the Cancer cluster, with above and all about us the blackness of the void, and the galaxy's flaming suns. Ahead shone the gathered suns of the great cluster, and I knew that we must capture the ship soon if at all; so now, half creeping and half walking, we made our way along the great ship's back toward the round space-door set midway along that back. In a moment we were clustered about it, and found it closed tightly from within, as I had expected. Instantly, though, we set to work on it with the metal bars and tools we had brought with us, drilling down through the thick metal of the door while we clung, like a hundred odd tiny mites, upon the mighty ship's back as it flashed on and on. What might lie in the ship beneath, what manner of beings might these terrible invaders be, we could not even guess, but it was our one chance to penetrate inside, and frantically we worked. Within moments more we had drilled through in a dozen places, were swinging aside the great bolts that held the door closed inside, and then were sliding it open and dropping swiftly down inside. We heard a little rush of air outward as the door opened, and knew that this ship was inhabited by air-breathing beings, at least, and then we found ourselves in the room beneath the space-door, a bare little vestibule chamber in whose side was a single square door.