Grimly the great Miran ship hung right beside them. Angrily the two four-foot UV beams flashed back--seeking some weak spot. There were none. At her absolute maximum of acceleration the little ship plunged on. Gamma and atomic bombs were washing her in flame. The heavy blocks of paraffin between her walls were long since melted, retained only by the presence of the metal walls. Smoke was beginning to filter out now, and Kendall recognized a new, and deadlier menace! Heat--quantities of heat were being poured into the little ship, and the neutron guns were doing their best to add to it. The paraffin was confined in there--and like any substance, it could be volatilized, and as a vapor, develop pressure--explosive pressure! The Miran seemed satisfied in his tactics so far--and changed them. Forty-seven million miles from Earth, the Miran simply accelerated a bit more, and crowded the Solarian ship a bit. White-faced, Buck Kendall was forced to turn a bit aside. The Miran turned also. Kendall turned a bit more-- Flashing across his range of vision at an incredible speed, a tiny thing, no more than twenty feet long and five in diameter, a scout-ship appeared. Its tiny nose ultra-violet beam was blasting a solid cylinder of violet incandescence a foot across in the hull of the Miran--and, to the Miran, angling swiftly across his range of vision. Its magnetic field clashed for a thousandth of a second with the T-253, instantly meeting, and absorbing the fringing edges. Then--it swept through the Miran's magnetic shield as easily. The delicate instruments of the scout instantaneously adjusted its own magnetic field as much as possible. There was resistance, enormous resistance--the ship crumpled in on itself, the tail vanished in dust as a sweeping crumbler beam caught it at last--and the remaining portion of the ship plowed into the nose of the Miran. The Miran's force-control-room was wrecked. For perhaps a minute and a half, the ship was without control, then the control was re-established--and in vain the telescopes and instruments searched for the T-253. Lightless, her rockets out now, her fields damped down to extinction, the T-253 was lost in the pulsing, gyrating fields of half a dozen scout-ships.