"We're caught, Ivy!" Strike shouted to the girl over the noises of battle. "She can't stand much more of this!" Cob was screaming at the gun-pointers through the open communicator circuit, his blood heated by the turbulent cacophony of crackling rays and exploding torpedoes. "Hit 'em! Damn it! Damn it, hit 'em now! Dead ahead! Hit 'em again!..." Ivy stumbled across the throbbing deck to stand at Strykalski's side. "The hyper drive!" she yelled, "The hyper drive!" It was a chance. It was the _only_ chance ... for Lover-Girl and Ivy and Cob and Celia ... for all of them. He had to chance it. "Ivy!" he called over his shoulder, "Check with Engineering! See if the thing's hooked into the surge circuit!" She struggled out of the flying bridge and down the ramp toward the engine deck. Strike and Cob stayed and sweated and cursed and fought. It seemed that she would never report. At last the communicator began to flash red. Strike opened the circuit with his free hand. "All right?" he demanded with his heart in his throat. "_Try it!_" Ivy shouted back. Strykalski lurched from his chair as another ray caught the ship for an instant and heated a spot on the wall to a cherry red. Gods! he prayed fervently. Let it work! A movement of the ship threw him to the deck. He struggled to his feet and across to the jerry-rigged switchboard that controlled the hyper drive's warp field. With a prayer on his lips, he slapped at the switches with wild abandon.... * * * * * The sudden silence was like a physical blow. Strike staggered to the port and looked out. No alien ships filled the void with crisscrossing rays. No torpedoes flashed. The _Cleopatra_ was alone, floating in star-flecked emptiness. There were no familiar constellations. The stars were spread evenly across the ebony bowl of the sky, and they looked back at him with an alien, icy disdain. The realization that he stood with a tiny shell, an infinitesimal human island lost in the vastness of a completely foreign cosmos broke with an almost mind-shattering intensity over his brain! He was conscious of Cob standing beside him, looking out into this unknown universe and whispering in awe: "_We're_ the aliens here...." Ivy Hendricks came into the bridge then, a haggard look around her eyes. "I came up through the ventral blister," she said, "Bayne is down there and he's having fits. There isn't a star in sight he recognizes and the whole hull of the ship is _glowing_!" Cob and Strykalski rushed back to the port, straining to see the back-curving plates of the hull. Ivy was right. The metal, and to a lesser extent, even the leaded glassteel of the port was covered with a dim, dancing witchfire. It was as though the ship were being bombarded by a continuous shower of microscopic fire bombs. Whitley found refuge in his favorite expression. "Ye gods and little catfish!" Strike turned to Ivy. "What do you think it is?"