For five long minutes DuQuesne held that terrific beam against the point of attack, then shut it off; for it had consumed less than half the thickness of the scout patrol's outer skin. True, the focal area of the energy was an almost invisibly violet glare of incandescence, so intensely hot that the concentric shading off through blinding white, yellow, and bright-red heat brought the zone of dull red far down the side of the vessel; but that awful force had had practically no effect upon the spaceworthiness of the stanch little craft. "No use, Loring!" DuQuesne spoke calmly into the transmitter inside his face plate. True scientist that he was, he neither expressed nor felt anger or bafflement when an idea failed to work, but abandoned it promptly and completely, without rancor or repining. "No possible meteorite could puncture that shell. Stand by!" He inspected the power meters briefly, made several readings through the filar micrometer of number six visiplate and checked the vernier readings of the great circles of the gyroscopes against the figures in his notebook. Then, assured that the _Violet_ was following precisely the predetermined course, he entered the airlock, waved a bloated arm at the watchful Loring, and coolly stepped off into space. The heavy outer door clanged shut behind him, and the globular ship of space rocketed onward; while DuQuesne fell with a sickening acceleration toward the mighty planet of the Fenachrone, so many thousands of miles below. That fall did not long endure. Loring, now a space pilot second to none, had held his vessel dead even with the _Violet_; matching exactly her course, pace, and acceleration at a distance of barely a hundred feet. He had cut off all his power as DuQuesne's right foot left the Osnomian vessel, and now falling man and plunging scout ship plummeted downward together at the same mad pace; the man drifting slowly toward the ship because of the slight energy of his step into space from the _Violet's_ side and beginning slowly to turn over as he fell. So consummate had been Loring's spacemanship that the scout did not even roll; DuQuesne was still opposite her starboard airlock when Loring stood in its portal and tossed a space line to his superior. This line--a small, tightly stranded cable of fiber capable of retaining its strength and pliability in the heatless depths of space--snapped out and curled around DuQuesne's bulging space suit. * * * * * "I thought you'd use an attractor, but this is probably better, at that," DuQuesne commented, as he seized the line in a mailed fist. "Yeah. I haven't had much practice with them on delicate and accurate work. If I had missed you with this line I could have thrown it again; but if I missed this opening with you on a beam and shaved your suit off on this sharp edge, I figured it'd be just too bad."