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“Mr. Hendricks!” I snapped. “Let’s have your theory–reasonable or otherwise.”

* * * * *

Hendricks, his face pressed at an angle against one side of the port, turned toward me, and swung the shutter into place. Kincaide snapped on the lights.

“It’s no longer a theory, sir,” he said in a choked, hushed voice, “although it’s still unreasonable. These things–are eating us!”

“Eating us?” Correy’s voice joined Kincaide’s and mine in the exclamation of amazement. He had just entered the navigating room in response to my order.

“Eroding us, absorbing us–whatever you want to call it. There’s one at work close enough to the port so that I could see it. It is feeding upon our hull as an electric arc feeds upon its electrodes!”

“Farewell Ertak!” said Correy grimly. “Anything the rays can’t lick–wins!”

“Not yet!” I contradicted him. “Kincaide, what’s the nearest body upon which we can set down?”

“N-127, sir,” he replied promptly. “Just logged her a few minutes ago.” He poured hastily through a dog-eared index. “Here it is: ‘N-127, atmosphere unbreathable; largely nitrogen, oxygen insufficient to support human life; no animal life reported; insects, large but reported non-poisonous; vegetation heroic in size, probably with edible fruits, although reports are incomplete on this score; water unfit for drinking purpose unless distilled; land area approximately–‘”

“That’s enough,” I interrupted. “Mr. Correy, set a course for N-127 by the readings of the television instrument. Mr. Kincaide, accelerate to maximum space speed, and set us down on dry land as quickly as emergency speed can put us there. And you, Mr. Hendricks, please tell us all you know–or guess–about the enemy.”

* * * * *

Hendricks waited, moodily silent, until the ship was coming around on her course, picking up speed every instant. Kincaide had gradually increased the pull of the gravity pads to about twice normal, so that we found it barely possible to move about. The Ertak was an old-timer, but she could pick up speed when she had to that would have thrown us all headlong were it not for the artificial gravity anchorage of the pads.

“It’s all guess-work,” began Hendricks slowly, “so I hope you won’t place too much reliance in my theories, sir. I’ll just give you my line of reasoning, and you can evaluate it for yourself.

“These things are creatures of space. No form of life, as we know it, can live in space. Therefore, they are not material; they are not matter, like ourselves.

“From their effect upon the charts, we decided they were electrical in nature. Not made up of atoms and electrons, but of pure electrical energy in an unfamiliar form.

“Then, remembering that they exist in space, and concluding that they were the destroyers of the two ships we know of, I began wondering how they brought about the destruction–or at least, the disappearance–of these two ships. Life of any kind must have something to feed upon. To produce one kind of energy we must convert, apparently consume, some other kind of energy. Even our atomic generators slowly but surely eat up the metal in which is locked the power which makes this ship’s power possible.

“But, in space, what could these things feed upon? What–if not those troublesome bodies, meteorites? And meteorites, as we know, are largely metallic in composition. And ships are made of metal.

“Here are the only proofs, if proofs you can call them, that these are not wild ideas: first, the disintegrator rays, working upon an electrical principle, reacted upon but did not destroy these things, as might be expected from the meeting of two not dissimilar manifestations of energy; and the fact that I did, from the port, see one of these space-things, or part of one, flattened out upon the body of the Ertak, and feeding upon her skin, already roughened and pitted slightly from the thing’s hungry activities.”