"There goes one tube!" Doren shouted jubilantly. "He'll have to cut down his drive now--to trim the jets!" The outlaw ship swung slowly in a climbing turn, and Kadine was sweeping black space with his fiery beam as he came. Like fencing foils, the two dazzling pencils of light crossed and recrossed--slashing and stabbing for the ships. But it was the duel of a slower, heavily armored adversary against a faster, unprotected opponent--for Kadine's metal hull would stand long seconds of heat, and a touch of his own stopped-down beam could bore into the vitals of the plastic Patrol Ship at a touch. "What's he up to?" growled Mike Doren. Once again, he had the other ship glowing dangerously red. Still Kadine came on. Nord's throbbing eyes were slitted almost shut. The other wouldn't get away with the same trick twice! As the ship loomed almost upon them, Nord laughed harshly, touched his own retarding jets briefly. Let the outlaw--Only then, he realized, suddenly--too late! Desperately, he threw the drive lever--as the glowing nose of the other ship smashed into their lower hull! The universe spun around him. He saw the stars streak across the view screens, and the floor beneath his feet bulge upward under the terrible impact--even as the last surge of her jets wrenched the Patrol Ship free, sent her staggering drunkenly upward. He gripped the control panel with long fingers whose steel clutch almost lifted him from the seat, and the grey eyes in his white face were bloodshot and wild! Beside him, Mike's rasping breath deepened into a groan. "Our heat ray's out! That devil--" Nord laughed. Their ship swung smoothly enough under its drive, as his hands shot over the levers. Of all the intricate wiring beneath them, only the ray circuit had been broken! But the bottom of their fighter had been torn open under the nose. In the lower screen, he saw the asteroid fragments they'd stowed away below, floating in space, bumping lightly against Kadine's steel hull as the black ship turned back. _Steel hull! Asteroid fragments!_ In his brain, the words rushed together into sudden, strange meaning with the thought of the heat ray! Nord laughed again, throwing his body far across the seat to press the two studs before the astounded Mike. "Mike, maybe we don't need a ray!" "I don't get it," his partner gasped. * * * * * Behind and below them, the little bay opened in the still undamaged section of their hull, the electro-magnet shot downward under its tiny automatic jets, and the winch paid out the cable. "Sunspot!" the dazed Mike whispered mechanically. The magnet had struck Kadine's ship, and clung, the cable falling slack below as the winch continued to turn. "But what good does it do us, Nord? He can't drag us into the Belt with him, our mass will throw off his trick drive correction." "Right! Kadine will have to finish us first--he can't ray that cable off!"