'Sorry, John... I... we've been following that ship. My scanner's giving some funny readings...'

'Go on...'

'Well, Mentor's supposed to be on board, isn't he?'

Koenig nodded frustratedly.

'I register no sign of life...'

'No sign of life?' Helena stepped forward in her suit 'John...' She stood behind him and gripped his shoulders in alarm.

Koenig stared grim-faced at the screen.

'What kind of control system is it using?' he asked the distraught technician.

'My scanners say Automatic Magnetic energy levels fluctuating wildly.'

'We've been tricked...!' Koenig said, ashen-faced. He stabbed at a switch, and the image of the alien space craft appeared again.

It had come to a stop now, and it had berthed alongside them.

They could see rows of dark portals in its forward hull. From its flat, sole-shaped body, silent propulsor rockets projected out.

It looked grey, lifeless, and sinister... a giant, blind fish seeing through unerring inner sense.

A cold feeling of dread rose inside the watching members of the Eagle crew.

Koenig reacted hesitantly, activating the intercommunication system.

'Mentor, signal when you're ready for link-up.'

He looked at his crew. 'No answer...' He turned back to the screen. 'I repeat. Signal when you're ready to dock.'

A bleep sounded and Verdeschi's worried face appeared on the TV monitor.

'John... there are no life forms at all on that ship... Fraser, Torens... they're not on it...'

Koenig stumbled to his feet in his bulky suit, not knowing now whether to be pleased or dismayed.

But he was too late.

A series of shocks shook the Eagle, throwing them to the floor. They climbed to their feet, and they were thrown down again. Koenig and Carter crawled to the control console and managed to drag themselves into the pilots' seats. They grappled with the controls.

'We're... picking up... magnetic... disturbance... too, now...' Koenig spoke brokenly.

'Mentor's ship, John... it's... radiating... magnetic... energy...' Carter croaked. 'We're... losing... al... ti... tude...'

'FULL POWER!' Koenig roared.

Carter pushed his controls forward and the engines of the Eagle thundered once again into life, all firing at once.

Gradually, as their thrust cancelled out the alien force of the fish ship's magnetic clutches, the shaking stopped.

'We're still continuing to drop slowly, John,' Carter reported. 'Our rate of descent's increasing again...!' He added fearfully. 'It's no use. Full power isn't enough. What the hell's in that thing?'

'Boosters... half thrust,' Koenig snapped.

'Half thrust, John,' Carter called out, pressing a button.

Another powerful wave shook the ship as the boosters flared into life. The shuddering increased violently.

The ship tilted and they clung to their seats as the floor went up in the air behind them.

Smoke and flames burst out from the controls in front of the pilots.

'She won't take it!' Carter coughed, speaking with great difficulty through the smoke and the heat. 'She'll break up.'

Koenig began to feel his skin being pulled away from his body inside his suit-the result of the invisible fingers of the huge gravitational attraction produced by the shuddering movement of the ship trying to escape from the dragging energy of the magnetic lasso that had been thrown around them.

Semi-paralysed, he tried to reach across to the Booster button where Carter sat. But he was scarcely able to move. His muscles were paralysed with the load they had to bear.

'Full... thrust...' he managed to speak, but his order came out almost as a whisper.

He jerked his finger on to the button and pressed it.

A terrific hammer blow hit the Eagle.

The emergency booster engines erupted into full power.

The cabin went white around him.

The grabbing claws seemed to tear whole sheets of his flesh away.

He clung grimly to his senses as his ship battled for its life against the fish-ship.

Then, he felt a sudden freedom.

He seemed to be shooting away through space at a delirious rate.

He realized gratefully, that Eagle Four had won the battle. They were hurtling away from their aggressor. They had broken free.

'We're clear!' Koenig gasped.

He turned around to face Helena and Picard who were climbing to their feet. Carter forced his body up off the smouldering console in front of him, his suit streaked with black carbon. He struggled to get the ship back under proper control.

They smiled at one another from behind their visors. Picard stabbed at a switch, and the TV monitor burst into life again.

The surface of Psychon was speeding away. The sinister grey ship was now a remote speck hanging against it, and dwindling fast.

'We're returning to base,' Koenig told them, 'to get reinforcements...'

His gloved hands began to manipulate the controls. But then a sudden gasp came from Picard.

'John... look. The ball of light...'

They looked at the screen again in alarm, their short-lived pleasure sliding off their faces.

The grey fish-ship had converted into the pale, deathly sphere of turquoise energy that had captured Eagle One.

Koenig and Carter wrestled with the controls again. But the ball of light grew and followed them swiftly.

Helena and Picard clung to supports as the pilots took the Eagle through a series of violent evasive manoeuvres.

But again they were too late.

The ship seemed to stop.

Koenig stabbed at the controls, but they did not respond.

The screen was filled with the pale, greenish pulsating glow of underwater ocean light.

The strange light washed into the cabin and bathed them in its magic.

They felt completely at peace now... in their bodies and in their minds, as they struggled to fight against the beatific visions that were bathing them.

'We're dropping,' Helena said, almost deliriously.

Through the green wash on the screen they saw Psychon's volcanic peaks appearing again. The ship swung towards one of them, held in the grip of the sphere, and they began to descend smoothly into its vent.

They were carried down deep inside the mountain, and now they looked in redoubled amazement at the scene that met their gaze on the crater floor.

It was a wide, greyish-white sea of ash.

In the ash were the half-buried forms of space craft, some recognizable by their design and insignia. But mostly they were unknown, alien craft. Ancient and new. Silent and dead. And there was nothing careful about the way they had been positioned. They lay almost jumbled about, as though strewn there by a giant's hand.

'...A cemetery of spaceships!' Helena spoke, shocked.

'And we're right in the middle of it!' Koenig told her.

The remains of the great ships were piled high around them.