Steve Hammond went to the microphone and laughed. "McBride is a master at the art of understatement," he said. "But my contribution to the art of eliminating planets is an anachronism. We have, on the _Haywire Queen_, one of the most useless things in the universe. I shudder to mention it, fellows, but there must be some good place for everything, no matter how useless it may seem. We--and hold your hats--have a rocket ship." A series of groans and catcalls returned over the communicator, and there was the shrill whistle of someone outrageously murdering "_La Miserere_." "Yep," continued Hammond, "Skyways, who boast that they can furnish transportation anywhere within reason or realm of operating practice, have furnished the _Pyromaniac_, which, named, appropriately, may operate on or near Soaky. It is a useless bit of machinery for anything else, and once the _Pyromaniac_ has landed on Soaky and planted spotter generators for us to get a precise 'fix' on, the _Pyromaniac_ will be relegated to some museum--if she doesn't get scuttled on the way in." At this point McBride returned and finished by saying: "We shall set up our lens, and exceeding Archimedes, 'Having a place to stand, we shall burn up a satellite.' So now go on and make the thing cook, fellows. You all have your orders. The _Haywire Queen_ will be a roving factor, feel free to call us for any trouble. We've got our own job cut out for us." * * * * * The twenty-four great ships of space, already spread out across the space between Sirius I and Telfu, began to jockey for their selected positions in space. McBride listened to the quick-running patter of the lens-technicians and the astrogators as they juggled their ships into the first semblance of order. Then he turned and nodded to Larry Timkins. Larry shook his head and left, going aloft to the rocket ship. The loft opened and the _Pyromaniac_ diverged from the opening. Hannigan, the _Haywire Queen's_ regular pilot, snapped the switches briefly and the _Queen_ darted away from the free-running _Pyromaniac_ for several miles. Then the first burst of flame came searing out in a mushroom, which lengthened to a long rapier of white fire. The _Pyromaniac_ moved off ponderously, and the sky was cut into two parts by the river of flame that burned in the rocket's jets. The rapier of flame curved slightly and pointed toward Telfu. "No worrying about him," said McBride. "We'll know where he is." "So will the rest of the system. O.K., Jawn, you've got the boys running--now for our problem. How do we make Silicon-acetyldiethyl-sulfanomid?" "Yeah. How?" "Well, according to La Drake, their trouble is the lack of stability. We can probably make it under high electronic charge--in fact, that's what she was suggesting." "What'll it do when we remove the intrinsic charge? Remember the xenon-bromide. It falls apart when we leave the high negative."