All that waited for the _Cleopatra_ in her own cosmos was a hot reception at the hands of the defenders of 40 Eridani C II, while here was mystery at close range. Mystery that was not cosmic in scope ... just a swarm of innocuous seeming planetoids ... the first explorable worlds that they had neared in this universe. Strike decided to heave to and examine their find. Ivy wanted samples and though no one said it in so many words ... no one was anxious for another encounter with the rapacious Eridans. With typically human adaptiveness they had sublimated their fear of the unknown space in which they found themselves. Curiosity took the place of fear and here was something close at hand to probe. Anthropoid inquisitiveness prevailed. * * * * * The _Cleopatra_ slowed, stopped. Strike and Cob Whitley suited up and armed themselves with spring-guns. In their clumsy space armor they dropped through Lover-Girl's ventral valve into the void. The monitor's glowing bulk retreated as they jetted toward the swarm of tiny worlds. Their space suits, too, glowed with the witchfire, outlining them against the eternal night. Back in the monitor's Communications shack, Ivy Hendricks and Celia Graham stood with Bayne and the other officers around the two way communicator that linked the two explorers with the ship. Out in space, Strike and Cob bound themselves together with a length of thin cable. They dropped down under power toward the planetoid they had selected to explore. "What's it like?" Ivy's voice crackled in their headsets. "Can't tell from this distance. We're still a good five miles away," replied Strykalski. "Looks like any other planetoid to me," averred Whitley. "Maybe you'd better fire a shot into the surface before you try landing, Strike," Ivy suggested. "Why?" "Just a hunch." Her voice sounded worried. "Okay, Ivy," Strike replied. "Cob, take a pot shot at it will you. You should be able to hit it from here ... it's twenty miles wide." Cob was disgusted. "And me the best shot in my class back at the Academy!" He drew his spring-gun and snapped a solid steel slug at the looming worldlet.... What happened next, they never knew exactly. On the dark surface of the planetoid a blazing bubble of white incandescence appeared, expanding within split seconds to all but obscure the whole bulk of the disk. It churned and whirled and flashed, mushrooming out in a hellish coruscation of destruction. The blaze of light outlined the two men and the ship and the planetoids within a fifty mile circle and the expanding shock wave fanned out. It struck the two space armored men to send them spinning wildly. The glowing bulk of the monitor reeled and bucked. Strike felt himself whipping up and down at the end of the cable that bound him to Cob Whitley. He felt himself being buffeted and burned by the dazzling flare of atomic fire. The merciful blackness spread itself like a curtain over his tortured eyes....