* * * * * We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an invisible soundless wasp encircling it. One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome. "Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must not even be a chance of an answering shot." Maneuvering for the kill. Fascinated, silently I watched as again we were heading for Rollins' ship. And within me a vague, desperate thought was growing: There are things through which one has no right to live. If only I could contrive it. Jerome was absorbed at his controls, his range-finders and his calculations. My hand touched Brenda's arm where she sat beside me. I whispered: "Brenda, we may not live through this." "I know." "I mean, if we were to die, to help that other ship." She stared at me, and then at her father. Jerome had called the old man, ordered him to the mechanisms of the vessel's invisibility, where he sat checking the dial-readings of his intricate apparatus. Briefly, its operation involved three scientific factors: De-electronization, thus to create around any metallic object a barrage of magnetic field of a new type to any previously developed; color-absorption, by which there can be no reflected light from the de-electronized object; and the Albert Einstein principle of the natural bending of light-rays when passing through a magnetic field. In effect then, the total color-absorption into the de-electronized object would make it, when viewed externally, a _nothingness_ to see. A blankness, like an outlined dark hole. But that in itself is not invisibility--merely a silhouette. The background would be blotted out, so that the invisible object would be perceived by the background it obscured. The magnetic field, however, by natural law which Einstein discovered, bends the light-rays from the background, _around_ the intervening object. The background thus seems complete. The intervening object has vanished! Simple in theory; but it was an intricate little apparatus here which now old Professor Carson was attending. I stared at him as he bent so earnestly over it. His beloved brain-child. For that moment Brenda tenderly regarded him. And then she turned to me. Her eyes were misted. "Whatever you think best," she murmured. Tensely I was waiting my chance. That tiny row of fragile vacuum tubes. My heart pounded suddenly as Jerome locked his space-controls and darted down to the forepeak to consult one of his men at a gun-range finder. I muttered: "Brenda take your father and get out of here quickly!" A burly, black-garbed guard was coming in from the turret balcony to watch us in Jerome's absence. I added in a swift undertone: "Go down with Jerome. Find some pretense to help him."