Duncan Wyatt sprang up, grabbed his gun and started toward the door before he had his eyes properly open. His ears were ringing with the explosive roar that had awakened him and the pre-fab shack still quivered in the shock wave. He thought the Third World War had started. He crouched in the doorway and peered out onto the mesa. The unorthodox shape of the experimental ultra-tight-beam transmitter loomed over him, black against the star-blazing New Mexican sky, bearing a red star of its own to w

There were places for four beside the pilot, spaced around the circular cockpit. Wyatt strapped himself into the seat nearest the girl. He imagined the take-off would be something special, and he was braced for it, but even the almost instantaneous transition from a state of sitting still on the ground to one of shooting straight up into the sky at a hell of a rate was hard to take. He jammed the gun into her back between the shoulders and said, "Not too high. We're not going to Alpha Centauri."

It had been night, and suddenly it was day. There was no twilight zone, no period of transition. The craft shot out of the Earth's shadow into the full blaze of the sun, and it was like somebody turning on all the lights in the world in the middle of a dark room. Wyatt flinched and turned his head away. When he dared to look again there was a filter lens over the port. Actually it must have slid into place at once, or the raw glare would have blinded him. And now space seemed to be brimming over

Here in the windowed bridge, the background was all stars. Clouds of stars, rivers of them, chains and globes of them, and drawn across them here and there like curtains of the most glorious fire ever imagined were the shining nebulae. They were all colors. Red, blue, smoky yellow, green, diamond white. Some of them, Wyatt realized, were not stars at all but galaxies, scattered out in careless millions through the apparently infinite universe. To an earthbound, skybound man like himself, this wa

The man was obviously sick, probably dying, painfully, spasmodically, and not from natural causes. He was a fairly young man, younger than Makvern, older than Brinna. He was strapped onto a kind of flat cradle made of a plastic mesh, and this was suspended in a circular pit, not very deep. Above the man, almost but not quite in contact with his body, was a double row of crystal rods, their bottom ends close together, their top ends spread to form a V. They were served by power leads that went aw

Instead of cowering against the door or trying to get out, as they expected him to do, Wyatt sprang straight for the man in the Levis. He was easy to get at because he was leading the others by a pace or so. Wyatt hit him. "Spy, am I?" he snarled. He was mad. The rush closed around him but he hung onto the man, who snorted and grappled with him, and they toppled over thrashing and kicking among the legs of the others. "I'll show you who's a spy," he said. The tall man he took to be an Australian

Brinna's face was now absolutely white, with her red mouth showing on it like a smear of blood. She dropped her hand to the grip of her own stunner. She almost made it but not quite. Makvern hit her full on with a crackling charge and she fell and lay still and senseless. Makvern sighed. "Poor Brinna. This is like snatching food from someone that's starving—I almost regret it—" "I'll bet you do," said Wyatt. If he could have got his hands between the rods and around Makvern's throat he would hav

It took Wyatt quite a long minute to realize that he was still alive and not even badly hurt. He didn't know about Brinna, but when he pushed her off him he was relieved to see her move. He scrambled to his feet and helped her up. Makvern came from the direction of the bridge. He shouted and made urgent motions. He was bleeding from a cut on the cheek and his shirt was torn. Wyatt pushed Brinna toward him and clambered over the buckled walls to the observation chamber. Burdick and Whitfield and

Makvern said sharply, "Hold your fire. They're ours." It was a minute before Wyatt took that in, and by that time someone had lifted the ten-ton weight of No-Name off his back and he was being hurried along the street and out across the fields toward the ships. There was some fighting still going on—the Second Party men had attacked the skeleton crews left behind after the troops disembarked, and a few of them were still holding out. "We'll have them mopped up soon," a young officer panted, runn