"Scout ship _K3296_, Sublieutenant Grenimar commanding, sending emergency distress message," he tapped out fluently. "Am not using telemental recorder, as required by regulations, because nearly all instruments wrecked. Private 244C14, on watch, suddenly seized with space insanity, smashed air valves, instruments, and controls. Opened lock and leaped out into space. I was awake and got into suit before my room lost pressure. My other man, 397B42, was unconscious when I reached him, but believe I got him into his suit soon enough so that his life can be saved by prompt aid. 244C14 of course dead, but I recovered his body as per general orders and am saving it so that brain lesions may be studied by College of Science. Repaired this manual sender and have ship under partial control. Am coming toward you, decelerating to stop in fifteen minutes. Suggest you handle this ship with beam when approach as I have no fine controls. Signing off--_K3296_." "Superdreadnought _Z12Q_, acknowledging emergency distress message of scout ship _K3296_," came almost instant answer. "Will meet you and handle you as suggested. Signing off--_Z12Q_." Rapidly the two ships of space drew together; the patrol boat now stationary with respect to the planet, the huge battleship decelerating at maximum. Three enormous beams reached out and, held at prow, mid-section, and stern, the tiny flier was drawn rapidly but carefully against the towering side of her mother ship. The double suction seals engaged and locked; the massive doors began to open. * * * * * Now came the most crucial point of DuQuesne's whole scheme. For that warship carried a complement of nearly a hundred men, and ten or a dozen of them--the lock commander, surgeons and orderlies certainly, and possibly a corps of mechanics as well--would be massed in the airlock room behind those slowly opening barriers. But in that scheme's very audacity lay its great strength--its almost complete assurance of success. For what Fenachrone, with the inborn superiority complex that was his heritage, would even dream that two members of any alien race would have the sheer, brazen effrontery to dare to attack, empty-handed, a full-manned Class Z superdreadnought, one of the most formidable structures that had ever lifted its stupendous mass into the ether? But DuQuesne so dared. Direct action had always been his forte. Apparently impossible odds had never daunted him. He had always planned his coups carefully, then followed those plans coldly and ruthlessly to their logical and successful conclusions. Two men could do this job very nicely, and would so do it. DuQuesne had chosen Loring with care. Therefore he lay at ease in his armor in front of the slowly opening portal, calmly certain that the iron nerves of his assassin aid would not weaken for even the instant necessary to disrupt his carefully laid plan.