Too late--before the hand had covered half the distance, the incomprehensibly fast ship had struck his own in direct central impact. In fact, before he even realized what was happening it was all over! The strange vessel had struck and had stopped dead-still--without a jar or shock, without even a vibration! Both ships should have been blasted to atoms--but there the stranger was, poised motionless beside him. Then, under the urge of a ridiculously tiny jet of flame, she leaped away, covering a distance of miles in the twinkling of an eye. Then something else happened. She moved aside, drifting heavily backward _against_ the stupendous force of her full driving blast! As soon as he recovered from his shock, Darjeeb's cold, keen brain began to function in its wonted fashion. Only one explanation was possible--_inertialessness_! What a weapon! With that and Luda--even without Luda--the solar system was his. No longer was it a question of Uhal overcoming Dhil. With inertialessness, he himself would become the dictator, not only of Uhal and Dhil and Lune, but also of all the worlds within reach. That vessel and its secrets _must_ be his! He blasted, then, to match the inert velocity of the smaller craft. As his ship crept toward the other he reached out both telepathically--he could neither speak nor hear--and with a spy-ray, to determine the most feasible method of taking over this godsend. Bipeds! Peculiar little beasts--repulsive. Only two arms and two eyes--only one head. Weak, soft, fragile, but they might have weapons. No, no weapons--good! Couldn't _any_ of them communicate? Ah yes, there was one--an unusually thin, reed-like specimen, bundled up in layer after layer of fabric.... _I perceive that you are the survivors of some catastrophe in outer space. Tell your pilot to open up, so that I may come aboard and guide you to safety_, Darjeeb began. He correlated instantly, if unsympathetically, the smashed panel and the pilot's bleeding head. If the creature had had a real head it could have wrecked a dozen such things with it without getting a scratch. _Hurry! Those may come at any moment who will destroy all of us without palaver._ _I am trying, sir, but I cannot get through to him direct. It will take a few moments_, the strange telepathist replied. She began to wave rhythmically her peculiar arms, hands, and fingers. Others of the outlanders brandished their members and made repulsive motions with their ridiculous mouths. Finally-- _He says that he would rather not_, the interpreter reported. _He asks you to go ahead. He will follow you down._ _Impossible--we cannot land upon this world or upon its primary, Dhil_, Darjeeb argued, reasonably. _These people are enemies--savages--I have just escaped from them. It is death to attempt to land anywhere in this system except upon my home planet Uhal--that bluish one._