"You asked for it--you got it--now just what are you going to do with it or about it?" DuQuesne spoke aloud, to render even more trenchantly cutting the crackling mental comments as they leaped across space, each thought lashing the officer like the biting, tearing tip of a bull whip. "Better men than you have been beaten by overconfidence," he went on, "and better plans than yours have come to nought through underestimating the resources in brain and power of the opposition. You are not the first race in the history of the universe to go down because of false pride, and you will not be the last. You thought that my comrade and I had been taken and killed. You thought so because _I_ wanted you so to think. In reality we took that scout ship, and when we wanted it we took this battleship as easily. "We have been here, in the very heart of your defense system, for ten days. We have obtained everything that we set out to get; we have learned everything that we set out to learn. If we wished to take it, your entire planet could offer us no more resistance than did these vessels, but we do not want it. "Also, after due deliberation, we have decided that the universe would be much better off without any Fenachrone in it. Therefore your race will of course soon disappear; and since we do not want your planet, we will see to it that no one else will want it, at least for some few eons of time to come. Think _that_ over, as long as you are able to think. Good-by!" * * * * * Duquesne cut off the visiray with a vicious twist and turned to Loring. "Pure boloney, of course!" he sneered. "But as long as they don't know that fact it'll probably hold them for a while." "Better start drifting for home, hadn't we? They're coming out after us." "We certainly had." DuQuesne strolled leisurely across the room toward the controls. "We hit them hard, in a mighty tender spot, and they will make it highly unpleasant for us if we linger around here much longer. But we are in no danger. There is no tracer ray on this ship--they use them only on long-distance cruises--so they'll have no idea where to look for us. Also, I don't believe that they'll even try to chase us, because I gave them a lot to think about for some time to come, even if it wasn't true." But DuQuesne had spoken far more truly than he knew--his "boloney" was in fact a coldly precise statement of an awful truth even then about to be made manifest. For at that very moment Dunark of Osnome was reaching for the switch whose closing would send a detonating current through the thousands of tons of sensitized atomic copper already placed by Seaton in their deep-buried emplantments upon the noisome planet of the Fenachrone.