Then for weeks Prime Base was the scene of an activity furious indeed. New apparatus was designed and tested; shears for tracers and tractors, generators of screens against cosmic-energy intake, scramblers for the communicators of the enemy, and many other things. Each item was designed and tested, redesigned and retested, until even the most skeptical of the patrol's engineers could no longer find in it anything to criticize. Then, throughout the galaxy, the ships of the patrol were called into their sector bases to be rebuilt.
There were to be two great classes of vessels. Those of the first were to have speed and defense—nothing else. They were to be the fastest things in space, and able to defend themselves against attack. That was all. Vessels of the second class had to be built from the keel upward, since nothing even remotely like them had theretofore been conceived. They were to be huge, ungainly, slow—simply storehouses of incomprehensibly vast powers of offense. They carried projectors of a size and power never before set upon movable foundations, nor were they dependent upon cosmic energy. They carried their own, in bank upon stupendous bank of Gargantuan accumulators. In fact, each of these monstrous floating fortresses was to be able to generate screens of such design and power that no vessel anywhere near them could receive cosmic energy!
This, then, was the bolt which civilization was preparing to hurl against Boskonia. In theory the thing was simplicity itself. The ultra-fast cruisers would catch the enemy, lock on with tractors, and go inert, thus anchoring in space. Then, while absorbing and dissipating everything that the opposition could send, they would put out a peculiarly patterned interference, the center of which could easily be located. The mobile fortresses would then come up, cut off the Boskonians' power intake, and finish up the job.
Not soon was that bolt forged; but in time civilization was ready to launch its stupendous and, it was generally hoped and believed, conclusive attack upon Boskonia. Every sector base and sub-base was ready; the zero hour had been set.
At Prime Base Kimball Kinnison, the youngest Tellurian ever to wear the four silver stripes of captain, sat at the conning plate of the cruiser Brittania II, so named at his own request. He thrilled inwardly as he thought of her speed. Such was her force of drive that, streamlined to the ultimate degree although she was, she had special wall shields, and special dissipators to radiate into space the heat of friction of the medium through which she tore so madly. Otherwise she would have destroyed herself in an hour of full blast, even in the hard vacuum of interstellar space!
And in his office Port Admiral Haynes watched a chronometer. Minutes to go—then seconds.
"Clear ether and light landings." His deep voice was gruff with unexpressed emotion. "Five seconds.... QX.... Lift!" And the fleet shot into the air.
The first objective of this solarian fleet was twofold, and this first hop was to be a short one indeed. For the Boskonians had established bases upon both Pluto and Neptune, right here in the solarian system. So close to Prime Base were these bases that only intensive screening and constant vigilance had kept their spy rays out; so powerful were they that the ordinary battleships of the patrol had been impotent against them. Now they were to be removed. Therefore the fleet, cruisers and "maulers" alike, divided into two parts; one part flashing toward Neptune, the other toward slightly more distant Pluto.
Short as was the time necessary to traverse any interplanetary distance, the solarians were detected and were met in force by the ships of Boskone. But scarcely had battle been joined when the enemy began to realize that this was to be a battle the like of which they had never before seen; and when they began to understand it, it was too late. They could not run, and all space was so full of interference that they could not even report to Helmuth what was going on. These first, peculiarly teardrop-shaped vessels of the patrol did not fight at all. They simply held on like bulldogs, taking without response everything that the white-hot projectors could hurl into them.