"Nydron," Bill said formally. "You're in absolute military charge of strategy, answerable to no one—not even to me! Your plan should make history. Every scientific mind on this ship, is at your disposal if needed. I told you which was their weakest link.... I think you've found the answer. While you give the necessary orders, I'm going to visit the clinic. The Juvenalian treatment should by now permit my questioning the Aurean girl safely. There are a few points not quite clear in my mind," he smiled. "It would be a dreadful thing to die and never know the complete answer to this mystery."
But Nydron was not interested in mysteries. His lambent eyes glowed with inner fires, as he bowed in the ceremonial manner to the Scientist-in-Chief, who had placed absolute command in his hands.
If there were the barest chance of victory, he would seize it. He knew that regardless of the outcome, the immortality of his name was assured, but if he won, this would be a victory unparalleled in the annals of their worlds. "It is a great honor, Commander," he said simply. "The greatest I have known. The Absolute willing, we shall win!"
Without wasting a single precious second, Nydron began issuing orders, sharp, definitive. The Dispersal Beam projectors swung into place, and the new radiant energy missiles, contributed by the Panadurs, took the place of the Strato-bombs. Battle-crews awaited tense and grim the initial frightful blast, for neither one nor the other had been tried before, and the combination of the Dispersal Beam and Radiant-energy Bombs was awe inspiring. Meanwhile the spacer maneuvered with vertiginous speed close to the eastern wall of Globes that formed a side of the quadrilateral, inverted pyramid. And then began the weirdest chase witnessed by man. For as the pyramid sought to expand to avoid the hurtling ship, the spacer accelerated suddenly and focused twin beams of light that became concentric yellow whorls of disintegrating, radio-active energy. It bathed two globes briefly, and simultaneously, a shower of bombs sped unerringly to their mark.
The stupendous concussion rocked even their spacer, as the Radiant-energy Bombs burst in a hellish burst of fire that no human eyes could endure, as if a new sun had been born in the skies. Where the globes had been, nothing remained, and those that had been close nearby, and had been touched by the yellow vortex of the beams, were spinning, lurching out of control in a headlong dive towards the shining sea below.
A great cry of joy went up within the Terran ship, fierce and terrible, as the battle-crews achieved first kill.
But instantly the pyramid shifted globes and closed the gap, and the amethyst-hued net of unimaginable force deepened again until it became almost black. And then a lengthening beam of milky-whiteness shot out of the globe at the apex, probing, relentless ... and wherever it touched, gigantic tongues of flame licked upwards along its length, as it consumed the screen's energy.
Nydron knew how limitless was the power of that white beam. And too, how close their margin was. From every projector he had the Dispersal Beam bathe as many globes as possible, and then the radiant energy bombs lashed out.
Saturn seemed to reel. The pyramid was riven, even as the spacer was tossed like a row-boat on a stormy sea. A deafening crescendo of titanic sound flowed over the planet, and coruscating walls of fire enveloped space, as if the titanic rings of Saturn had spilled over into the stricken world.
And relentlessly, the emerald-tinged yellow vortex of the beams continued to be focused on the Cinnabarian globes, while the unbroken salvos of sound went on endlessly until the last fragment of radiant energy was consumed in its own supernal fire, and globes fell like shooting stars.