"Not in this life. If they tried to follow us, they're both dead before now."
"That's where even you are wrong!" she flashed at him. "They knew you were wrecking our machine, so they built another one, a good one. And they know a lot of things about this new metal that you have never dreamed of, since they were not in the plans you stole."
DuQuesne went directly to the heart of the matter, paying no attention to her barbed shafts.
"Can they follow us through space without seeing us?" he demanded.
"Yes—or at least, I think they can."
"How do they do it?"
"I don't know—I wouldn't tell you if I did."
"You'll tell if you know," he declared, his voice cutting like a knife. "But that can wait until after we get out of this. The thing to do now is to dodge that world."
He searched the vessel for copper, ruthlessly tearing out almost everything that contained the metal, hammering it flat and throwing it into the power-plant. He set the bar at right angles to the line of their fall and turned on the current. When the metal was exhausted, he made another series of observations upon the body toward which they were falling, and reported quietly: