Jonnie watched Stormalong’s old orbit miner come in. A sentry turned off the atmosphere-armor shield and let the plane through, and they turned it back on. There was always a faint sizzle from it when the power went on, but after that it was silent. Aside from some luckless birds and insects that hit it and sometimes left a feather or feelers, one wouldn’t know it was there. All pilots had had to be warned, and a complex set of guard signals had had to be developed lest some pilot crash his ship.
Stormalong put the old ship alongside a metal pulverizer. The Psychlos used a device which first “softened” metal by breaking down its molecular cohesion and then let it go through armored rollers that really tore it apart and smashed it. The result was a metal powder so fine that if one threw a
