Fireworks exploded in space when the bolt struck Craven's ship. Screen after screen exploded in glittering, flaming sparks, but the ship rode the lashing charge, finally halted the thrust of power. The beam glowed faintly, died out.
Perspiration streamed down Greg's face as he bent over a calculator and constructed the formula for a magnetic field. He sent out a field of such unimaginable intensity that it would have drawn any beryl-steel within a mile of it into a hard, compact mass. Even the Invincible, a hundred miles away, lurched under the strain. But Craven's ship, after the first wild jerk, did not move. A curious soft glow spread out from the ship, veered sharply and disappeared in the magnetic field.
Greg swore softly. "He's cutting it down as fast as I try to build it up," he explained, "and I can't move it any nearer."
From Craven's ship lashed out another thunderbolt and once again the engines screamed in terrible unison as they poured power into the ship's triple screen. The first screen stopped all material things. The second stopped radiations by refracting them into the fourth dimension. The third shield was akin to the anti-entropy field, which stopped all matter ... and yet the ten engines bellowed like things insane as Craven struck with flaming bolts, utilizing the power he had absorbed from the fifty billion horsepower Greg had thrown at him.
There was anger in Greg Manning's face ... a terrible anger. His fists knotted and he shook them at the gleaming ship that lay far down near Jupiter.
"I've got one trick left," he shouted, almost as if he expected Craven to hear. "Just one trick. Damn you, see if you can stop this one!"
He set up the pattern on the board and punched the activating lever. The ten engines thrummed with power. Then the howling died away.
Four times they screamed and four times they ebbed into a gentle hum.
"Get on the navigation controls!" yelled Greg. "Be ready to give the ship all you've got."
Greg leaped for the control chair, grasped the acceleration lever.