A red light pulsed rapidly on the console near Lurton Zimbardo’s chair. Seeing the flash from the corner of his eye, he jerked his head around and stared at it as if he couldn’t believe that it was lit. “What’s this?” he thought. “There’s no message due now.” He pressed the button that deactivated the light, placed headphones on, dialed a few knobs on the console, and pressed “Play.” Fifteen seconds later he leaped up from his chair and bellowed. With both hands he jerked the headphone cord out of the control panel. The wires whipped through the air with a noise like a scourge. Zimbardo twirled, his eyes bulging, and flung the headphones from him with all his force. The set flew through the command center and collided with the opposite wall. Everyone in the room froze and turned to look at the pirate leader, and were appalled at what they saw. He was trembling with demonic fury. No one moved or said a word. Even Gene was afraid to speak. “_They found us!!_” Zimbardo shouted. “They found us! The Earthmen know where we are! They’ve located the fleet!! The freighters those fools destroyed yesterday were decoys! The Earthmen deployed the real probes and they’ve already found us! They outsmarted us!” He cursed vehemently, then growled as if his teeth were grinding on gravel. “But I’ve never been outsmarted! I won’t be outsmarted now!” Zimbardo jumped back into his chair. “Gene! _GENE!!_” He screamed like a man possessed. “Right here sir,” said the young man, coming up quickly to the pirate leader’s side. “Crank up all the power this asteroid can give me! I’m going to create the biggest electromagnetic pulse this Solar System has ever seen, and _BURN_ every last one of those probes out of the void!! And then when we are invisible again, we’ll move this asteroid to a new course and continue our plan.” “But sir,” pleaded Gene, almost desperately. “That would take a lot of power! It would be highly inefficient and might work against us! I don’t know the power capacity of the asteroid! It could very well burn us out!” Zimbardo stopped moving for a moment, then turned his head very slowly around and stared at Gene. His eyes glinted with an unearthly light. “Do it,” he hissed. Gene stepped back half a pace, then pivoted swiftly and ran to the power breakers on the far side of the room. He began to pull switches, override safety indicators, and turn power dials to maximum output. In a little less than three minutes, he turned and looked back at Zimbardo. The pirate leader had not taken his eyes off of his assistant for a second. With his mouth slightly open, Gene looked into Zimbardo’s eyes from across the room and nodded with a quick jerk of his head. Zimbardo smiled, inclined his head slowly, and turned back to his console. He laughed out loud and pressed the switch that activated a general direction EMP.