Dully the mirror-force relay clicked. A hazy glow ran over the silver block, and died. Then--simultaneously the power was thrown from two small, compact atostors into the twin projectors. Instantly--a titanic eruption of light almost invisibly violet, spurted out in a solid, compact stream. With a roar and crash, it battered its way through the thick air, and crashed into the heavy target plate. A stream of flame and scintillating sparks erupted from the armor plate--and died as Kendall cut the beam. A white-hot area a foot across leaked down the face of the metal. "That," said Faragaut gently, removing his goggles. "That's not a spotlight, and it's not exactly a gas-flame. But I still don't know what that blue-hot needle of destruction is. Just what do you call that tame stellar furnace of yours?" "Not so far off, Tom," said Kendall happily, "except that even S Doradus is cold compared to that. That sends almost pure ultra-violet light--which, by the way, it is almost impossible to reflect successfully, and represents a temperature to be expressed not in thousands of degrees, nor yet in tens of thousands. I calculated the temperature would be about 750,000 degrees. What is happening is that a stream of low-voltage electrons--cathode rays--in great quantity are meeting great quantities of sextuply ionized oxygen. That means that a nucleus used to having two electrons in the K-ring, and six in the next, has had that outer six knocked off, and then has been hurled violently into free air. "All by themselves, those sextuply ionized oxygen atoms would have a good bit to say, but they don't really begin to talk till they start roaring for those electrons I'm feeding them. At the meeting point, they grab up all they can get--probably about five--before the competition and the fierce release of energy drives them out, part-satisfied. I lose a little energy there, but not a real fraction. It's the howl they put up for the first four that counts. The electron-feed is necessary, because otherwise they'd smash on and ruin that mirror. They work practically in a perfect vacuum. That beam smashes the air out of the way. Of course, in space it would work better." "How could it?" asked Faragaut, faintly. "Kendall," asked McLaurin, "can we install that in the IP ships?" "You can start." Kendall shrugged. "There isn't a lot of apparatus. I'm going to install them in my ships, and in the--bank. I suspect--we haven't a lot of time left." "How near ready are those ships?" "About. That's all I can say. They've been torn up a bit for installation of the atostor apparatus. Now they'll have to be changed again." "Anything more coming?"