"However," said Kim, "I've arranged that. I had Disciplinary-Circuit projectors fitted on the Starshine. We turn them on that ship. Automatically, the generator on the decoy will cut off. Our friends will still be helpless, and we can go up and grapple—if our engines keep going!"
He threw a switch. A relay snapped over somewhere and a faint humming noise began. The tingling of Kim's body ceased. The decoy and the enemy space-ship grew large before them. The enemy was still motionless.
Its crew, formerly held immobile by the circuit in the decoy, was now held helpless by the beams from the Starshine. But neither Kim nor the Mayor of Steadheim could enter the enemy ship without becoming paralyzed too.
Dona slipped quietly from the control-room. She came back, clad in a space-suit with the helmet face-plate open.
"All ready, Kim," she said quietly.
Sweat stood out in droplets on Kim's face. The Starshine drifted ever so gently into position alongside the pair of motionless shapes—the one so solid and huge, the other so flimsy and insubstantial. Kim energized the grapples. There was a crushing impact as the Starshine anchored itself to the enemy.
Kim reached over and pulled out a switch.
"That's the wristlet relay switch," he told Dona. "We stay here until you come back—even if a fighting-beam hits us. You've got to go on board that monster and get some fuel and, if you can, a hafnium catalyzer. If another battleship's around and comes up—you drive the Starshine home with what fuel you can get. We'll be dead, but you do that. You hear?"
"I'll—hurry, Kim," Dona said.
"Be careful!" commanded Kim fiercely. "There shouldn't be a man on that ship who can move, but be careful!"