"I think," said Burke, "that most people will dislike me very much. I'll be in the history books, but I'll be in small print. People who can realize they're obligated will resent it, and those who can't will think I got famous in a disreputable fashion. In fact, if we go back to Earth, I'll probably have to fight to keep from going bankrupt. If I manage to get enough money for a living, it'll be by having somebody ghost-write a book for me about our journey here." Keller interrupted mildly, "It's nearly time. We should watch." Holmes stood up jerkily. Pam and Sandy rose almost reluctantly. They went out of the ship and through the metal door with rounded corners. They went along the long corridor with the seeming river of light-tubes in its ceiling. They passed the doorway of the great room which had held the globes. It looked singularly empty, now. On the next level they passed the mess-halls and bunk-rooms, and on the third the batteries of grisly weapons which could hurl enormous charges of electricity at a chosen target, if the target could be ranged. They went on up into the instrument-room by the final flight of stairs. They settled down there. That is, they did not leave. But far too much depended on the next hour or less for anybody to be truly still in either mind or body. Holmes paced jerkily back and forth, his eyes on the vision-screens that now relayed what the observer-globes with the globe-fleet saw. For a long time they gazed at the emptiness of deepest space. The picture was of an all-encompassing wall of tiny flecks of light. They did not move. They did not change. They did not waver. The observer-globes reported from nothingness, and they reported nothing. Except one item. There were fewer red specks of light and more blue ones. There were some which were distinctly violet. The globes had attained a velocity so close to the speed of light that no available added power could have pushed them the last fraction of one per cent faster. But they had no monstrous mass-fields to change the constants of space and let them travel more swiftly. The Enemy ships did. But there was no sign of them. There could be none except on such a detector as the instrument-room had in its ten-foot transparent disk. Time passed, and passed. And passed. Finally, Burke broke the silence. "Of course the globes don't have to make direct hits. We hope! If they multiply the gravity-field that hits them and shoot it back hard enough, it ought to burn out the gravity-generators in the ships." There was no answer. Pam watched the screens and bit nervously at her nails. Seconds went by. Minutes. Tens of minutes.... "I fear," said Keller with some difficulty, "that something is wrong. Perhaps I erred in adjusting the globes--"