He paused and spoke reflectively.
"A curious war, this. We've no weapons and we arrive at a post-war settlement before we start fighting. We've decided how to keep from killing our enemies before we're sure how we'll defeat them and I suspect that the men had better stay at home and let the women go out to battle. I'm not sure I like it."
He set to work. In twelve hours one-half of the transmitter-drive of the Starshine had been removed and set up on the unnamed planet of a galaxy not even imagined by human beings before.
In fifteen hours the Starshine, rather limpingly, went aloft.
An hour later Kim carefully tuned the transmitting part of the little ship's drive to the matter-receiving station on Ades. In that way, and only in that way, the ship would inevitably arrive at the home galaxy of humanity.
And he pushed a button.
It arrived at the matter station on Ades instead of descending from the skies. And the people on Ades were surprised.
6
Man-Made Meteor
No obvious warlike move had been made on either side, of course. Ades swam through space, a solitary planet circling its own small sun. About it glittered the thousands of millions of stars which were the suns of the First Galaxy.