The mighty beam had lashed out. The vibrations of the directing mirror began placing gigantic spots and sweeps of unresistible energy across the ice cap of Greenland, in an ever-diminishing Lissajous pattern. By the time the servos refocused the communications beam on Thule, there was no Thule; only a burnt-out crater where it had been. Slowly, but surely, the giant balloon settled itself to the task of burning a hole through the Greenland ice cap at a spot eighty miles north of that now-burnt-out Thule Base that had originally been planned as a test of its accuracy; and to the simple task of holding that focus in spite of the now steady, though infinitesimal acceleration under which it joined the procession headed by Lab One. Now that the waves of action and reaction from the shock energy of its sudden start had subsided, Hot Rod's accuracy was proving great indeed; and its beam focus was proving as small as had been predicted. But the instruments that would have measured those facts no longer existed. In the engineering control center of Space Lab One, the Confusor churkled quietly and continued to pit its mosquito might against its now nearly seventy-eight million pound antagonist, as the protons and electrons of the plastic that was center to its forces did their inertial best to occupy that position in space towards the north star in which the warped fields around them forced them to belong--the mosquito strained its six hundred forty pound thrust against its giant in the per second per second acceleration that was effective only in the fraction of a fraction of a fraction of a centimeter in the first second, but that compounded its fractions per second. * * * * * On the quiet bridge, the captain looked up as the Com Officer said, "Thule Base, sir," and switched on his mike. "Hot Rod has been sabotaged," a frantic voice on the other end of the beam shouted in his ear without formalities. "She's running wild. Kill her! Repeat, Hot Rod is wild! Kill Hot Rod! Kill--" the mike went dead as Captain Andersen switched to the morgue intercom. "Hot Rod crew," he said briefly. "Report to the bridge on the double. Repeat. Hot Rod crew. The bridge. On the double." As he switched off the intercom, the communications officer spoke urgently. "Captain. I've lost contact with Thule base." "Keep trying to raise them," Captain Andersen said. He turned to Bessie. "Give me a display of the Hellmaker," he said; then, almost to himself, "There's still a flare in progress out there. We've got to kill it without sending men into that--" He cut himself off in midsentence, as the computer displayed both Hot Rod, swaying gently as she fought out the battle of the focus through its final moments, and a telescopic view of Greenland, a tiny, glowing coal of red showing at the center of her focus. Through the door nearly catapulted the first of the Project Hot Rodders, followed almost on his heels by twelve more.