Mercurian Amazons, power-rapiers and all—bristling with lethal weapons.

These last were the most eager of all. Seeing them in their bulky, serried ranks, Bill Nardon flashed them a clear, blue glance and grinned. The mental picture of these ruthless creatures tangled in mortal combat with the taloned homunculi of the Energasts, would have astonished the gods.

But all their preparations were in vain, for suddenly the Ethero-Magnum screen began to glow in the control room, as other screens glowed in the stately central cabin, in the Juvenal Chamber, and even upon the walls of the battle-stations so that what one saw, was the property of all. The sound of indrawn breaths sounded explosive in the stillness; an unbearable tension made the atmosphere electric.

For one agonized instant, no one dared to hope—an anticlimax would have been terrible to endurances that had been tested to the breaking point. In this planet of contradictions and alien madness, anything was possible.

Out of the misty darkness of outer space, the streaks of silver that were ships flashed headlong into the monstrous embrace of Saturn, wheeling over the planet's outermost gravitational limits, in awe-inspiring orbital fall. The strange tug-of-war between the pull of the vast rings, and the giant planet itself, must be neutralized. Swinging in tremendous arcs to lessen the speed they hadn't dared diminish in space, they came in roaring with all braking rockets flaming in great blasts. Behind them, still more silver streaks came into view.

For an awful moment it seemed as if the forces against them would defeat the ships. They seemed to hang static in space, as they turned the night of Saturn red with the furious cataracts of rocket fire. And then—

"They're going to make it. They are!" Bill Nardon exulted fiercely.

V

The foremost, a Terran spacer, had cut its rockets and swerved, peeling off in a magnificent plunge from dizzying heights into the atmosphere. Behind it streamed the balance of the Terran Fleet, like hounds that had sighted its quarry. And in the nebulous reaches of the stratosphere, the swarm that was still more ships flashed, reflecting the splendor of the rings.

The lofty screen divided itself into two parts now. One segment showed the Terran ship come coasting down in great, breath-taking spirals, followed by its sister vessels, while the upper section mirrored the out-distanced and far more 

 Prev. P 38/41 next