Indignantly the Mayor of Steadheim bellowed from the space-phone speaker and Kim answered him patiently.
“The decoy still had a disciplinary-circuit field on,” he explained for the tenth time. “You know about it! When you tried to go galumphing in, the field grabbed you and paralyzed you. When your muscles went iron hard, the relay on your wrist—you wear it to protect you from the fighter-beams—threw your ship into transmitter-speed travel.
“So you were somewhere else. When you came back you charged in again and the same thing happened. The relay protected you against our field as well as the enemy fighter-beams. That’s all.”
The Mayor wheezed and sputtered furiously. It was plain that he had meant to distinguish himself and his four sons by magnificent bravery.
“There’s something that
