space-phone:

"Everything's fine! If the others do the same...."

A second giant fled in the same fashion. The small ships of Ades were appearing on every hand and plunging toward their enemies. A third huge ship made a crazy, irresolute half-turn and also took the only possible course by darting away from its home planet on overdrive. Then the fourth!

"They'd no time to give an alarm," said Kim crisply. "Into atmosphere now and we do our stuff!"

The tiny craft plunged toward the planet below them. It swelled in the Starshine's forward vision-ports. It filled all the firmament. Kim changed course and aimed for the limb of the planet. The ship went down and down.

A faint trembling went through all the fabric of the ship. It had touched atmosphere. There was a monstrous metropolis ahead and below. Kim touched a control. A little thing went tumbling down and down. He veered out into space again.

He watched by electron telescope. Like tiny insects, the fleet of Ades flashed over the surface of the planet. They seemed to have no purpose. They seemed to accomplish nothing. They darted here and there and fled for open space again, without ever touching more than the outermost reaches of the planet's atmosphere.

But it took time. They were just beginning to stream up into emptiness again when the first of the giant warships flashed back into view. This time it was ready for action.

Its beam-projectors flared thin streams of ions that were visible even in empty space. The ships of Ades plunged for it in masses. The fighting-beams flared terribly.

And the little ships vanished. Diving for it, plunging for it, raging toward it with every appearance of deadly assault, they flicked into transmitter-drive when the deadly beams touched them. Because the crews of every one were fitted with the wristlets and the relays which flung them into infinite speed when the fighting-beams struck.

In seconds, when the second and third and fourth Sinabian warships came back from the void prepared for battle, they found all of space about their home planet empty. They ragingly reported their encounter to headquarters.

Headquarters did not reply. The big ships went recklessly, alarmedly, down to ground to see what had happened. They feared annihilation had struck 

 Prev. P 33/42 next