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go fast!" Kinnison ordered, briskly. "I'm afraid we're going to run out of time as it is !"
    All hands hurried back into the Brittania, paying no attention to the bodies littering the decks. So desperate was the emergency, each man knew, that nothing could be done about the dead, whether friend or foe. Every resource of mechanism, of brain and of brawn, must needs be strained to the utmost if they themselves were not soon to be in similar case.
    "Can you talk, Nels?" demanded Kinnison of his Communications Officer, even before the airlock had closed.
    "No, sir, they're blanketing us solid," that worthy replied instantly. "Space's so full of static you couldn't drive a power-beam through it, let alone a communicator. Couldn't talk direct, anyway -- look where we are," and he pointed out in the tank their present location.
    "Hm . . . m . . . m. Couldn't have got much farther away without jumping the galaxy entirely. Boskone got a warning, either from that ship back there or from the disturbance.
    They're undoubtedly concentrating on us now . . . . . .One of them will spear us with a tractor, just as sure as hell's a mantrap . . . . . '
    The fledgling commander rammed both hands into his pockets and thought in black intensity. He must get this data back to Base -- but how? HOW? Henderson was already driving the vessel back toward Sol with every iota of her inconceivable top speed, but it was out of the question even to hope that she would ever get there. The life of the Brittania was now, he was coldly certain, to be measured in hours -- and all too scant measure, even of them. For there must be hundreds of pirate vessels even now tearing through the void, forming a gigantic net to cut off her return to Base. Fast though she was, one of that barricading horde would certainly manage to clamp on a tractor --
    and when that happened her flight was done.
    Nor could she fight. She had conquered one first-class war-vessel of the public enemy, it was true, but at what awful cost! One fresh vessel could blast his crippled mount out of space, nor would there be only one. Within a space of minutes after the attachment of a tracer the Brittania would be surrounded by the cream of Boskone a fighters. There was only one chance, and slowly, thoughtfully, and finally grimly, young Lieutenant Kinnison -- now and briefly Captain Kinnison -- decided to take it.
    "Listen, everybody!” he ordered. "We must get this information back to Base, and we can't do it in the Brittania. The pirates are bound to catch us, and our chance in another fight is exactly zero. We'll have to abandon ship and take to the lifeboats, in the hope that at least one will be able to get through.
    "The technicians and specialists will take all the data they, got -- information, descriptions, diagrams, pictures, everything -- boil it down, and put it on a spool of tape.
    They will make about a hundred copies of it. The crew and the Valerian privates will man boats starting with Number Twenty One and blast off as soon as you can get your tapes.
    Once away, use very little detectable power, or better yet no power at all, until you're sure the pirates have chased the Brittania a good many parsecs away from where you are.
    "The rest of us -- specialist and the Valerian non-corns -will go last. Twenty boats, two men to a boat, and each man will have a spool. We'll start launching when we're as far as it's safe to go. Each boat will be strictly on its own. Do it any way you can, but some way, any way, get your spool back to Base. There's no use in me trying to impress you with the importance of this stuff, you know what it means as well as I do.
    "Boatmates will be drawn by lot. The quartermaster will write all our names -- and his own, to make it forty even – on slips of paper and draw them out of a helmet two at a time. If two navigators, such as Henderson and I, are drawn together, both names go back into the pot. Get to work!”
    Twice the name of "Kinnison" came out together