And Hotang Lu understood. Toralen Ki intended to excite the minds of Lane and Downing by forcing them, psychological opposites, into mental contact. And he, Toralen Ki, was right now in bitter conflict with his own mental opposite—the Loard-vogh. The mental energies released in Thompson's mind had given the Terran the full and perfect control of his own mental ability.
They opened their eyes, both of them.
"Won," said Thompson, wiping his brow.
Toralen Ki inspected the Terran carefully. "You know, now?"
Billy nodded. "The rest of Terra and Sol must be excited. Wait—I must order Lane and Downing to stop."
The planetoid loomed larger and larger, and Downing crowded Lane closer. On approaching courses, it was becoming evident that the conjunction of courses would occur simultaneously with their arrival at the huge meteor. And yet Downing was the better off, for if he and Lane kept their courses doggedly true, Lane's ship would hit the meteor first. The carom, of course, would drive the flaming remnants of Cliff Lane's craft upward into Stellor Downing's ship, with the resulting injury to the latter.
Downing jacked up the magnification of his course-scanner with a twitch of his free hand. A rounded knoll of rock covered the scanner plate, and the cross-hairs that marked Stellor's course were just above and just to the left of the top of the knoll. A full-power shot with the dymodine in the right place—
And the caroming ship would deflect sidewise instead of straight up!
Stellor Downing trained the dymodine projector until the tiny circle in the course-scanner was still farther to the left of the top of the knoll than his ship's course.
The course-scanner in Cliff Lane's ship told him that he was heading for the knoll of rock. It would be a slicing blow, with Cliff's ship bounding up into Downing's craft. That much he knew.