"Aye, sir." Lieutenant Fitzhugh turned away from the scanner, and one by one the men came back along the boarding line to the cruiser's airlock. The scanner flicked off as the signalman made his way back. * * * * * "Enemy on starboard beam," the talker's voice was lost in a clangor of alarms and a thudding concussion as the entire starboard battery erupted one simultaneous blast of destruction at the Eglan cruiser which had suddenly emerged a scant five miles away. The Eglan was quick, inhumanly quick in his reaction. He had broken out much too close, but even so his primary screens flared an instant before the broadside struck. But no primary screen ever built could stand alone against the megatons of energy that instantaneously erupted against it. Screen and ship disappeared in the hellish blast, reduced instantly to glowing radioactive gas. The enormous fireball licked hungrily toward the "Dauntless" as the automatic controls promptly took her back into hyperspace. Lieutenant Fitzhugh, still ten feet from the open airlock saw the flare of the explosion and the premonitory shudder of the ship. He knew that he didn't have time enough to make it. With the strength of desperation he threw the object he carried toward the rapidly closing airlock as the ship vanished from sight and the searing fireball enveloped his body. He never had time to decide whether his aim had been true or not.... Fiske looked at the Eglan head Lockman Vornov was holding up to his viewplate. The man was talking. "--He was still outside when we hypered, sir, but he threw this in through the airlock. It hit me on the leg, sir." For the first time Fiske really understood the term "mixed emotion." He was feeling it now. Regret at Fitzhugh's death was exactly balanced by the wild hope that the impossible might have happened--that the head was that of an Eglan soldier rather than a civilian. Certainly Fitzhugh wouldn't have brought it back unless he had good reason to suspect that it might be useful--nor would he have tried so desperately to get it aboard ship. "Get that thing down to Doc Bonner," he ordered, "and tell him that I'll be along in a minute."... * * * * * Old Doc Bonner who derived his nickname from combat rather than chronological age looked inquiringly at Fiske. "Should I post it or pickle it?" he asked. "Post it. It might blow up before we reach home. Get to work." "It's a point," Bonner admitted, "but it might not be too valid with Headquarters. Since it hasn't exploded by now it probably won't." Fiske shook his head. "There's no sense in taking chances. Besides it might belong to a civilian."