"And we've got six!" Kinnison said, exultantly. "Our own two, Asia's Himalaya, Africa's Johannesburg, South America's Bolivar, and Europe's Europa."
... Battle cruisers and heavy cruisers, about in the usual proportions; but an unusually high ratio of scouts and light cruisers. There were either two or three large ships which could not be classified definitely at that distance; long-range observers were going out to study them.
"Tell Clayton," Kinnison instructed Randolph, "that it is to be Operation Affick, and for him to fly at it."
"Report continued," the speaker came to life again. "There are three capital ships, apparently of approximately the Chicago class, but tear-drop-shaped instead of spherical ..."
"Ouch!" Kinnison flashed a thought at Samms. "I don't like that. They can both fight and run."
"... The battle cruisers are also tear-drops. The small vessels are torpedo-shaped. There are three of the large ships, which we are still not able to classify definitely. They are spherical in shape, and very large, but do not seem to be either armed or screened, and are apparently carriers—possibly of automatics. We are now making contact—off!"
Instead of looking at the plates before them, the two Lensmen went en rapport with Clayton, so that they could see everything he saw. The stupendous Cone of Battle had long since been formed; the word to fire was given in a measured two-second call. Every firing officer in every Patrol ship touched his stud in the same split second. And from the gargantuan mouth of the Cone there spewed a miles-thick column of energy so raw, so stark, so incomprehensibly violent that it must have been seen to be even dimly appreciated. It simply cannot be described.
Its prototype, Triplanetary's Cylinder of Annihilation, had been a highly effective weapon indeed. The offensive beams of the fish-shaped Nevian cruisers of the void were even more powerful. The Cleveland-Rodebush projectors, developed aboard the original Boise on the long Nevian way, were stronger still. The composite beam projected by this fleet of the Galactic Patrol, however, was the sublimation and quintessence of each of these, redesigned and redesigned by scientists and engineers of ever-increasing knowledge, rebuilt and rebuilt by technologists of ever-increasing skill.
Capital ships and a few of the heaviest cruisers could mount screen generators able to carry that frightful load; but every smaller ship caught in that semi-solid rod of indescribably incandescent fury simply flared into nothingness.
But in the instant before the firing order was given—as though precisely timed, which in all probability was the case—the ever-watchful observers picked up two items of fact which made the new Admiral of the First Galactic Region cut his almost irresistible weapon and break up his Cone of Battle after only a few seconds of action. One: those three enigmatic cargo scows had fallen apart before the beam reached them, and hundreds—yes, thousands—of small objects had hurtled radially outward, out well beyond the field of action of the Patrol's beam, at a speed many times that of light. Two: Kinnison's forebodings had been prophetic. A swarm of Blacks, all small—must have been hidden right on Earth somewhere!—were already darting at the Hill from the south.