Poor Snap! He and I had planned to capture and navigate this _Star-Streak_. We could have handled her. There were, I gathered, some fifteen men aboard her now, but no more than two or three were engaged at the navigating mechanisms. Even they could be dispensed with at times, for the ship's controls were all automatic, handled directly from the forward turret. I learned too, something, though not much, of the _Star-Streak's_ weapons. They were similar to those of the allied ships, since Molo in equipping his pirate craft had seized upon all the best he could find of the three worlds. The _Star-Streak_, during this flight toward Mars, was in close communication with the Wandl craft. There was a giant vessel, the Wor, off to our left now. It carried the brain master in command of the Wandl forces. Molo took his orders from the Wor, but since his equipment and his weapons were so wholly different, the _Star-Streak_ was set apart. "I can do what I like," Molo told me. "With my own judgement I can act; you shall see." "You've had plenty of experience, Molo." "Have I not! The terror of the starways, your world called me." He chuckled vaingloriously. "I must justify it now." "Act, do not talk," Meka commented sourly. "Children with toys make speeches like that, and then the toys get broken." "Fear not, sister. Never again will the _Star-Streak_ come to grief." And now I gazed through the 'scope at the waiting allied ships. They were lying some eight million miles off Mars. I gazed and saw the poised little group. There were perhaps fifty of them. The majority were Martian, long, low and very sharp-ended, and dull red in color. The wider Earth and Venus ships were silvery and drab. I could distinguish the several different types of craft in this hastily assembled fleet: many converted commercials like my ill-starred _Cometara_; a few rakish police ships; and about a dozen of the long, narrow supermodern warships. It was their first voyage into battle. They had only been built these past few years, by peaceful governments that protested there never again would be another war! The little fleet was lying waiting for us. It was being augmented by occasional other ships from Mars. They saw us coming now. The radiance of a Benson curve-light enveloped them, with a shaft toward us. The image of them shifted over a million miles to one side. Molo laughed when he saw it. "Protecting themselves already! But we are not going to attack them there." The first tactics of the Wandl commanders surprised me. We swung away from the course to Mars and headed diagonally toward Earth and Venus. Earth was the nearer to us, with Venus some forty million miles beyond her. For hours we turned in that sweeping curve. Then with our Wandl convoy following, we headed for Earth. I could not help admiring the way the _Star-Streak_ was handled. She turned more sharply than the Wandl craft; and before our next meal, we were leading them all.