The closed hatch of the ship shimmered, dissolved into a black hole. Behind Travis someone let out the yammer of a war whoop. "Fire--cut the walls to pieces!" Travis did not need that order from Jil-Lee. He was already beaming unseen destruction at the best target he could ask for--the side of the sphere. If the globe was armed, there was no weapon which could be depressed far enough to reach the marksmen at ground level. Holes appeared, irregular gaps and tears in the fabric of the ship. The Apaches were turning the side of the globe into lacework. How far those rays penetrated into the interior they could not guess. Movement at one of the holes, the chattering burst of machine-gun fire, spatters of soil and gravel into their faces; they could be cut to pieces by that! The hole enlarged, a scream ... cut off.... "They will not be too quick to try that again," Nolan observed with cold calm from behind Travis' post. Methodically they continued to beam the ship. It would never be space-borne again; there were neither the skills nor materials here to repair such damage. "It is like laying a knife to fat," Lupe said as he crawled up beside Travis. "Slice, slice--!" "Move!" Travis reached to the left, pulled at Jil-Lee's shoulder. Travis did not know whether it was possible or not, but he had a heady vision of their combined fire power cutting the globe in half, slicing it crosswise with the ease Lupe admired. They scurried through cover just as someone behind yelled a warning. Travis threw himself down, rolled into a new firing position. An arrow sang over his head; the Reds were doing what the Apaches had known they would--calling in the controlled Mongols to fight. The attack on the ship must be stepped up, or the Amerindians would be forced to retreat. Already a new lacing of holes appeared under their concentrated efforts. With the gun held tight to his middle, Travis found his feet, zigzagged across the bare ground for the nearest of those openings. Another arrow clanged harmlessly against the fabric of the ship a foot from his goal. He made it in, over jagged metal shards which glowed faintly and reeked of ozone. The weapons' beams had penetrated well past both the outer shell and the wall of insulation webbing. He climbed a second and smaller break into a corridor enough like those of the western ship to be familiar. The Red spacer, based on the general plan of the alien derelict ship as his own had been, could not be very different. Travis tried to subdue his heavy breathing and listen. He heard a confused shouting and the burr of what might be an alarm system. The ship's brain was the control cabin. Even if the Reds dared not try to lift now, that was the core of their communication lines. He started along the corridor, trying to figure out its orientation in relation to that all-important nerve center.