"Don't do it. Stay on scouting duty for a while longer. And, unless something more interesting turns up, report back here to base. We have something that may interest you. The boys have been——"
The admiral's picture was broken up into flashes of blinding light and his words became a meaningless, jumbled roar of noise. A distress call had begun to come in, only to be blotted out by a flood of the Boskonian static interference, of which the ether had for so long been clear.
"Got its center located?" Kinnison barked at his communications officer. "They're close—right in our laps!"
"Yes, sir!" And the radio man snapped out numbers.
"Blast!" the captain commanded, unnecessarily; for the alert pilot had already set the course and his levers were even then flashing across their arcs. "I don't know what we can do, since we haven't got a thing to do anything with, if that baby is what I think it is. But believe me, we'll try!"
Toward the center of disturbance shot Brittania II, herself emitting now a scream of peculiarly patterned interference which was not only a scrambler of all possible communication throughout that whole sector of the galaxy, but also an imperative call for any mauler within that sector. So close had the Brittania II been to the scene of depredation that for her to reach it required only minutes.
There lay the merchantman and her Boskonian assailant. Emboldened by the cessation of piratical activities, some shipping concern had sent out a freighter, loaded probably with highly "urgent" cargo; and this was the result. The marauder, inert, had gripped her with his tractors and was beaming her into submission. She was resisting, but feebly now; it was apparent that her screens were failing. Her crew must soon open ports in token of surrender, or roast to a man; and they would probably prefer to roast.
Thus the situation in one instant. The next instant it was changed; the Boskonian discovering suddenly that his beams, instead of boring through the weak defenses of the freighter, were not even exciting to a glow the mighty protective envelopes of a cruiser of the patrol.
He switched from the diffused heat beam he had been using upon the merchantman to the hardest, hottest, most penetrating beam of annihilation he mounted—with but little more to show for it and with no better results. For the Brittania II's screens had been designed to stand up almost indefinitely against the most potent beams of any space ship, and they stood up. Increase power as he would, to whatever ruinous overload, the pirate could not break down Kinnison's screens; nor, dodge as he would, could he again get in position to attack his former prey. And eventually the mauler arrived; fortunately it, too, had been fairly close by. Out reached its mighty tractors. Out raved one of its tremendous beams, striking the Boskonian's defenses squarely amidships.