burden he was about to take upon himself, dwelt briefly on the expectant ones of the Military Strategist.

"Enough for about six hours, if we use the Energon Screen." Nydron said it quietly and with eagerness that was like an expressed hope. "I think we can tip the balance ... don't you?"

Bill glanced for an instant into the screen, where shimmering globes and the League's ships were falling into the tossing, exploding chaos that was the sea.

He thought of the Martian fleet, protected by the Energon, but powerless to neutralize the Cinnabarian defenses without the Terran Dispersal Beam; of the Venusian ships, helpless in that holocaust, despite their invulnerable Vulcanite Hulls, and, with a catch in his throat, of the gallant Terran vessels, able to draw the fangs from the spheres with the Dispersal Beam, but open to the lethal power of those hellish white beams of the Energasts, because they did not have the Multi-Energon. But organized, they could wreak untold havoc on the enemy.

"Give battle orders; we are going up. The Martians, under the protection of their Energon Screens, to get as close as possible to the globes, ready to hurl their bombs, while the Terran ships behind them, screened by the Martian Fleet, aim their Dispersal Beams to neutralize their violet power screens. Keep the Venusians and Mercurians as reserves—that roughly, should be our strategy, modify it as needed, Nydron.... We'll lead!"

He gazed up into the flaming clouds where the League's Fleet and the Energasts had swept upwards in coruscating swirls of intolerable radiance, and then his gaze came to rest on the golden glory of the Aurean girl. "Margalida," he said softly, as if there were an ineffable magic in that name. "Almond blossom," he murmured softly to himself, as if in those few, last tragic moments, he would stamp forever the imprint of her loveliness in his heart.

There was no sound. The tortured atmosphere of the planet regained a measure of peace. Only the sea remained monstrously convulsed as if striving to spew the shattered Globes and spacers now sunk beneath its waves. And on the windswept shore, only a fraction of the Inter-Planetary League's great ships had come to rest.

Of the Energasts there was no sign—not a single violet globe remained in all that vast expanse, under the blazing glory of the eternal stars. But the victory had been almost a defeat. Countless vessels from all six planets, and still more countless dead would 

 Prev. P 40/41 next