"Run topside, son," gasped the older man at last. "See if you can signal the launches--we'll never make it by ourselves." In two minutes Kort gained the deck. The first thing his eyes sought was the mainmast grid. It had struck an aurora, no longer the pale blue of ten minutes ago, by a hot, bright yellow signifying that the arresters were bypassing current to the sea. How long before they would break down under the rising potential? He ran to the starboard rail at the sound of voices, the bump of a boat touching the ship's side, and almost collided with a grinning, brawny stoker. The launches were back! Men slapped him jubilantly on the back, dignity, discipline and all else forgotten. Smoke from the _Mermaid's_ funnel had announced to them the conquest of the creatures from the sea. Ten minutes later the thin blue thread was a belching cloud. Below decks turbo-generators whined at speed, and aloft the anti-potential grids gleamed with the soft green halos of the protective repulsion fields. * * * * * Her sodium fog lights boring yellow tunnels through the night mist, the _Mermaid_ scudded over the _Molo Ivrum_ at her maximum of twenty knots. In the wheelhouse Hodge noisily sucked his pipe, staring the while at Kort, who had the wheel. "Wouldn't figure on staying on this tub with me, would you?" Hodge asked suddenly. "I'm in line for the captain's berth, but damned if I can think of anybody to recommend for my first mate. Exceptin' you." "I--I hadn't said I was leaving," Kort replied. "You hadn't said--but you were thinkin' plain out," murmured Hodge. "Noticed in the last few hours how the men are acting?" A grin touched his grizzled face as Kort made no answer. "Haven't noticed how they jump when you give an order now, son? You're a blinkin' hero, by Jerusalem. Weren't for you they'd be scrapin' ribs with the sharks by now, and they know it." Kort flushed in silence but said nothing. "Only thing I couldn't tell 'em," complained Hodge, "was how you knew the things would have left the ship after you killed just that one." "That was a wild guess," admitted Kort, spinning the wheel briefly. "That one was no more solid than the others--until it was dead. I wondered where it was when it wasn't there. And suddenly the answer came--all over the ship, of course. During that part of its period when it wasn't in the cabin it was in the stokehole and on deck and maybe on the bottom, three miles down, besides. Because it wasn't several, but all one. Just one thing, with the power of being several places at once." He paused, then continued.