Ryd inched forward in his seat; his fingers, numbed as if the cold of sheer space had crept into the cabin, found the release. Then he was able to see Arliess, hunched forward close to his control board. One hand clenched over the magnet rheostat; but something had gone wrong. The astrogator had bent the synthyl handle out and away from its contacts; and now something gleamed half-hidden in his hand. Its ends were almost touching the inner contact of the switch handle and the minimum-resistance tap of the rheostat coil--a short piece of bared silver wire, whose placing between those contacts would send current leaping through the shortened circuit and pouring full into the magnet coils. It would envelop _Shahrazad_ and power cylinder in a field of great intensity--but of brief duration, a fractional instant before the equilibrium of the stored atoms toppled and towship and cargo shell, together like one, vanished in one exploding flame, brighter than the Sun. This was the end. Mury was beaten, and of course he, Ryd, was beaten too. For keeps, this time. With maudlin self-pity, he saw himself as one caught and singled out for destruction by the gods in the machine. "Cut the drive," repeated Arliess for the third time. Still the Panclast did not move, and his face betrayed none of what he must feel of the terrible irony by which a bit of wire, a short circuit, could wreck the plan that was to have shaken a planet. He said without stirring, "You can't use bluff on me, Arliess." "I know that and I'm not bluffing," said young Arliess, pale to the lips, with burning eyes. "I know your type, Mury. The monomaniac. You're not afraid of dying, but you are afraid when the success of your mission is threatened. But you can forget those plans now. We're going to stop, flash a distress signal." "I never meant we should escape the final crash of the power shell," said Mury. "Escape was needless to the plan, and to die in such a cause.... But I'll make you a bargain now, Arliess. I'll let you parachute to safety when we're in the atmosphere, if you'll swear to reveal nothing. Otherwise--perhaps you are aware of the power of--_We_." Arliess' grin was savage. "Don't try to frighten me with children's boogie-men. I know that such an organization exists, and I knew one of their members once--a poor, starved gutter-rat without principles or courage or anything but a vicious wish to kick the world that had kicked him. No, Mury, _you're_ something else again." "I've explained my aims to you, Arliess. I have no private wrongs to avenge. I have acted because all history urges Earth and Mars to the death grapple; I have been an agent of history. You, not I, are the madman if you try to stand in the way." Arliess laughed shortly. "I hold the final argument, though.... _Cut the drive!_" V