"They're _here_ only at intervals, and persistence of vision bridges the time gap between those intervals. The blaster bolts last only a few micro-seconds, a far shorter time than their natural period. A bolt comes and goes while the thing you fire at actually _isn't there_. It would be sheer luck if the bolt should coincide to hit it at the instant it's actually materialized--sheer luck, because our eyes can't help us. Even a Venusian wouldn't be able to synchronize a bolt--there isn't that quick co-ordination between brain and muscle. The odds would always be against us." * * * * * The seamen looked blank. Hodge drummed the chart table with a huge fist. "If you're right, we need a faster bullet or a slower bolt." "Or _timing_!" finished Kort. "Have Sparks rig a stroboscope out of spare parts. You know how moving parts can be made to look as if they're standing still, in an intermittent light that flashes only when they are at one point in their movement. With all other lights off, a stroboscope wouldn't show us the things at all, except when we have it exactly synchronized with their vibratory period. Rig the blaster in series with the light circuit, and it would have to fire at exactly the right time. That'll get them." One of the seamen cleared his throat. "Maybe it would--or maybe not. This is no time for theories. We're speaking for all the men now. We don't mean to stay aboard to be blasted by the _Kilwanni_ or strangled by these damned snakes. We want to take the launches." "Supposin' you did," Hodge countered. "You'd last just till the _Mermaid's_ hit. Then the potential would flatten out, with the launches stickin' up in it like sore thumbs. There ain't no anti-grids on them, and you couldn't get away quick enough." "We'd rather take our chances than go down with this tub," snarled the other man. "You ain't going to stop us!" Hodge shrugged, then stared in amazement at Kort, who stood by the door with a leveled electro-gun. "I'm stopping you. Listen--you won't last five minutes out there in the launches, without anti-grids. Give Sparks an hour to rig a stroboscope and we can get back into the stokehole. With pressure on the boilers we can charge the anti-grids and the storm won't touch us." The men looked black rage at him, but made no move. Hodge's right hand hovered over his own gun. "Don't draw!" snapped Kort. "I don't want to hurt you, Hodge, but this means the life of all of us, not just one or two." "Forgettin' something, ain't you?" asked Hodge dryly. "I'd be all for you, if we had an hour to spare. Take a look at the grids." Kort risked a glance aloft, through the wheelhouse windows. Against a dark, sultry sky the spiral network of the anti-grids already glowed with faint pricklings of St. Elmo's light--harmless prologue to the storm to come. Any weather-wise sailor could read the menace in those flaming curtains to port, swirling in fiery splendor, very tapestries of hell.