Parr came slowly to his senses. He staggered directionless around the control room. Everything was a shambles. After a while--nearly an hour had elapsed--he was wandering through silent corridors. It was hot inside his suit. He found the pick-up ships eventually, but they were ripped from their moorings. One seemed upright and serviceable. He tested the motor. The motor worked. He got out and struggled with the escape hatch. Finally it came loose. He taxied the pick-up ship out of the mother ship. Hyperspace was grey and hideous. Here and there lights flashed. The vast, battered derelict of the Advanceship lay below him. Hyperspace sped away. He blasted further from the gutted hull and brought up the space shield of his craft. It wavered around him. Behind him the tortured Advanceship exploded. He hit back toward real space. The craft skittered under his hands as he wrenched at the controls. The motor was strong, but its delicate shielding apparatus had been damaged and there was a sickening jolt. The shield was off and Parr was falling, down, down, down, and lights in his head exploded. And he thought it was infinitely sad that he had done something decent for the first time and now he was to be punished for all the rest. Then he knew no more.... * * * * * The comset had erupted into a babble of incredible confusion after her message. She waited leadenly. She warned the Fleet once more. "If you do not leave at once, we Oholos will destroy your whole Fleet." She had no way of knowing what was happening. The Knoug commanders, unnerved, cried among themselves: "No weapon I ever heard of could do _that_!" "The advanceman was right! They can destroy us!" "I say we don't stand a chance!" "Did you hear? It just _vanished_." "I'm going to order my ship back." "I've already shielded for hyperspace." "What's the Flagship say?" "What's the Flagship _say_?" "Commander Cei just pulled out. That makes five." "As for me, I say, Let's go!" "_The Flagship has already got its hyperspace shield turned on!_" Slowly the voices died away. The comset was silent in Lauri's hand, and she knew that the Fleet had gone. The Advanceship was destroyed. Remembering Parr, she bowed her head. She saw the body of Kal lying at her feet, where she had found it in the second room on the tenth floor. And she was crying without sound. CHAPTER XI She finally got through to the other Oholos. They listened, because the expected attack had not come. They came for her and she met their airship in the street. They soared above the silent city of Denver. "A _Knoug_!" one said. "Who ever would have thought a _Knoug_ would do that!" She tried to explain but they did not listen for they were busy with other thoughts. She was still crying, but inwardly now. She said, "Don't you see what he might have _become_ within a few years?" "Imagine hitting hyperspace without a shield," one Oholo said.