It was, of course, the result of that very small device that Kim had built into the _Starshine_ before even the invention of the transmitter-drive. It was a relay which flung on faster-than-light drive the instant fighting-beams struck any living body in the ship. The _Starshine_ had been thrown into full interstellar drive while still in atmosphere. It had plunged upward--along the line of its aiming--through the air. The result of its passage to Khiv Five could only be guessed at, but in even the unthinkably minute part of a second it remained in air, the ship's outside temperatures had risen two hundred degrees. Moving at multiples of the speed of light, it must have created an instantaneous flash of literally stellar heat by the mere compression of air before it. Kim was sick and shaken by the agony which would have killed him had it lasted as long as the hundredth of a second. But Dona stared at him. "Kim--what--Oh!" She ran to him. The beam had not touched her. So close to the projector, it had been narrow, no more than a yard across. It had struck Kim and missed Dona. "Oh, my poor Kim!" He grimaced. "Forget it," he said, breathing hard. "We've both had it before, but not as bad as this. It was a mobile fighting-beam projector. I imagine they'll think we burned up in a flash of lightning. I hope there were X-rays for them to enjoy." For a long time Kim Rendell sat still, with his eyes closed. The dosage of the fighting-beam had been greater than they had ever experienced together, though. It left him weak and sick. "Funny," he said presently. "Barbarous enough to have soldiers with decorative uniforms and shiny dingle-dangles on them, and modern enough to have fighting-beam projectors, and a weapon that's wiped Ades out of space. We've got to find out who they are, Dona, and where they came from. They've something quite new." "I wonder," said Dona. But she still looked at Kim with troubled eyes. "Eh?" "If it's new," said Dona. "If it's a weapon. Even if--if Ades is destroyed." Kim stared at her. "Now, what do you mean by that?" "I don't quite know," admitted Dona. "I say things, and you turn them over in your head, and something quite new comes out. I told you a story about a dust-grain, once, and you made the transmitter-drive that took us to Ades in the first place and made everything else possible afterward." "_Hmmm_," said Kim meditatively. "If it's new. If it's a weapon. If Ades is destroyed. Why did you think of those three things?"