With all their might of brain and skill of hand and with all the resources of their fifth-order banks of forces, it was no small task for the Norlaminians to build the sixth-order controlling system which their ship must have if they were to traverse universal space in any time short of millenia. But finally it was done. A towering mechano-electrical brain almost filled the mid-section of their enormous sky rover, the receptors and converters of the free energy of space itself had been installed, and their intra-atomic space-drive, capable of developing an acceleration of only five light-veloci ties, had been replaced by Seaton's newly developed sixth-order cosmic-energy drive which could impart to the ship and its entire contents, without jolt, jar, or strain, any conceivable, almost any calculable, acceleration. For many days the Norlaminian vessel had been speeding through the void at her frightful maximum of power toward the _Skylark of Valeron_, which in turn was driving toward our Galaxy at the same mad pace. Braking down now, since only a few thousand light-years of distance separated the hurtling flyers, Seaton materialized his image at the brain control of the smaller cruiser and thought into it for minutes. "There, we're all set!" In the control room of the _Skylark_ Seaton laid aside his helmet and wiped the perspiration from his forehead in sheer relief. "The trap is baited and ready to spring--I've been scared to death for a week that they'd tackle us before we were ready for them." "What difference would it have made?" asked Margaret curiously. "Since we have our sixth-order screens out they couldn't hurt us, could they?" "No, Peg; but keeping them from hurting us isn't enough--we've got to capture 'em. And they'll have to be almost directly between Rovol's ship and ours to make that capture possible. You see, we'll have to send out from each vessel a hollow hemisphere of force and surround them. If we had only one ship, or if they don't come between our two ships, we can't bottle them up, because they have exactly the same velocity of propagation that our own forces have. "Also, you can see that our projector can't work direct on more than a hemisphere without cutting its own beams, and that we can't work through relay stations because, fast as relays are, the Intellectuals would get away while the relays were cutting in. Any more questions?" "Yes; I have one," put in Dorothy. "You told us that this artificial brain of yours could do anything that your own brain could think of, and here you've got it stuck already and have to have two of them. How come?" "Well, this is a highly exceptional case," Seaton replied. "What I said would be true ordinarily, but now, as I explained to Peg, it's working against something that can think and act just as quickly as it can." "I know, dear, I was just putting you on the spot a little. What are you using for bait?"