With such detailed instructions, Kinnison's agents, one by one, ceased to be. But as one was beamed down another took his place, and soon every one of the few remaining living pirates in the dome was blasting indiscriminately at every other one. And then, to cap the Saturnalian climax, came the zero second.
The grand fleet of the Galactic Patrol had assembled. Every cruiser, every battleship, every mauler hung poised above its assigned target. Every vessel was stripped for action. Every accumulator cell was full to its ultimate watt; every generator and every arm was tuned and peaked to its highest attainable efficiency. Every firing officer upon every ship sat tensely at his board, his hand hovering near, but not touching, his firing keys, his eyes fixed glaringly upon the second hand of his synchronized electric timer, his ears scarcely hearing the droning, soothing voice of Port Admiral Haynes.
For the old man had insisted upon giving the firing order himself, and he now sat at the master timer, speaking into the master microphone. Beside him sat von Hohendorff, the grand old commandant of cadets. Both of these veterans had thought long since that they were done with space war forever; but only an order of the full Galactic Council could have kept either of them at home. They were grimly determined that they were going to be in at the death, even though they were not at all certain whose death it was to be. If it should turn out that it was to be Helmuth's, all well and good—everything would be on the green. If, on the other hand, young Kinnison had to go, they would, in all probability, have to go, too—and so be it.
"Now remember, boys, keep your hands off those keys until I give you the word." Haynes' soothing voice droned on, giving no hint of the terrific strain he himself was under. "I'll give you lots of warning. I am going to count the last five seconds for you. I know that you all want to shoot the first bolt, but remember that I, personally, will strangle any and every one of you who beats my signal by a thousandth of a second. It won't be long now; the second hand is starting around on its last lap. Keep your hands off those keys. Keep away from them, I tell you, or I'll smack you down. Fifteen seconds yet. Stay away, boys; let 'em alone. Going to start counting now." His voice dropped lower and lower. "Five—four—three—two—one—fire!" he yelled.
Perhaps some of the boys did beat the gun a trifle; but not many, or much. To all intents and purposes it was one simultaneous blast of destruction that flashed down from a hundred thousand projectors, each delivering the maximum blast of which it was capable. There was no thought now of service life, of equipment or of holding anything back for a later effort. They had to hold that blast for only fifteen minutes; and if the task ahead of them could not be done in those fifteen minutes it probably could not be done at all.
Therefore, it is entirely useless even to attempt to describe what happened then, or to portray the spectacle that ensued when beam met screen. Why try to describe high C to a man born deaf? Suffice it to say that those patrol beams bored down, and that Helmuth's automatic screens resisted to the limit of their ability. Nor was that resistance small. It was of such power that, years later, astronomers observed and recorded a peculiarly behaving Nova in Star Cluster AC 257-4736.
Had Helmuth's customary staff of keen-eyed, quick-witted lieutenants been at their posts, to reënforce those primary screens with the practically unlimited power which could have been put behind them, his defenses would not have failed, even under the unimaginable force of that Titanic thrust; but those lieutenants were not at their posts. The screens of the twenty-six primary objectives failed, and the twenty-six stupendous flotillas moved slowly, grandly, voraciously, each along its designated line.
Every alarm in Helmuth's dome had burst into frantic warning as the massed might of the Galactic Patrol was first hurled against the twenty-six vital points of Grand Base; but those alarms clamored in vain. No hands were raised to the switches whose closing would unleash the hellish energies of Boskone's irresistible projectors; no eyes were upon the sighting devices which would align them against the attacking ships of war.