Ahead of them, bright fingers of light probed the darkness; lights that expanded rapidly, blindingly. The blades found something. There was a sound of ripping and tearing as metal shrieked against metal in deafening protest. The Z1000 stopped. Still the hurtling lights of the Vestena fighters came on. One after the other, like blind fireflies, they flashed into the tunnel to be ground to bits by the screaming blades of the Cutter. Then the Z1000 lurched sickeningly. The enemy ships, ripping through the now broken and slowing blades, pounded at full speed into its hull. Blair Freedman, staggering and half-unconscious from the shock, sought for the controls. He was too late. The Z1000 had stopped running. He reached blindly for Sheila.... Outside, the tunnel was a hell of noise. Showering sparks cast an eerie red glow that was occasionally punctuated by the blinding white flash of an explosion. Ship after ship pelted into the buckling plates of the Cutter until the cavernous maw of the tunnel became a molten mass of smashed, twisted scrap. Then, gradually, the noise died down as the last Vestena ship hurled itself into oblivion. The shriek of mangled metal was stilled. The fires flickered into darkness. And in the control cabin of the huge Z1000, Blair Freedman and Sheila Graham, battered almost beyond recognition, lay in each other's arms--united in the final sacrifice of death. End of Project Gutenberg's Through the Asteroids--To Hell!, by Leroy Yerxa