"All right, we have her spotted; we're going to open up on her," the voice from the _Gaucho_ announced. "She has two 90's to our one; we'll try to disable them, first." The vision-screen lit with the indirect glare of the gun-flash, and the image in it jiggled violently as the ship shook to the recoil, then steadied again, with the enemy ship visible in the middle of it, growing larger and larger as the _Gaucho_ rushed toward her. The gun fired again and again, flooding the screen with momentary yellow light and disturbing the image as the recoil shook the gun-cutter. The enemy ship began firing in reply, the shots were all wide misses. Apparently the geek guncrew didn't know how to synchronize the radar sights, and were ignorant of the correct setting for the proximity-fuses. The _Gaucho_'s searchlights came on, bathing her quarry in light. It was the _Jan Smuts_; the name and the figurehead-bust of the old soldier-philosopher were plainly visible. Her forward gun had been knocked out, and she was trying to swing about to get a field of fire for her stern-gun. "We're going to give her a rocket-salvo," the voice said. "Watch this, now!" The rockets leaped forward, from the topside racks, four and four and four and four, at half-second intervals. The first four hit the _Smuts_ amidships and low, exploding with a flare that grew before it could die away as the second four landed. Nobody ever saw the third and fourth four land. The _Jan Smuts_ vanished in a blaze of light that blinded everybody in the room; when they could see again, after some thirty seconds, the screen was dark. In the direct-vision screen from the _Sky-Spy_, the whole countryside of the Konk Valley, five hundred miles north of Konkrook, was lighted. The heat and radiation detectors were going insane. And in the shifting confusion on the radar-screen, there was no trace either of the _Jan Smuts_ or the _Gaucho_. "Well, the geeks did have an A-bomb," Themistocles M'zangwe said, at length. "I'd been trying to kid myself that we were just preparing against a million-to-one chance. I wonder how many more they have." "Paula, find out who was in command of the _Gaucho_; he'd be a junior-grade lieutenant. Fix up orders promoting him to navy captain, as of now. It's probably the only thing we can do for him, anymore. And promotions of the same order for everybody else aboard that cutter. Authority Carlos von Schlichten, acting Governor-General." He picked up a phone. "Get me Commander Prinsloo, on _Aldebaran_...."