"That's what's clogging my jets." The Lensman agreed. "As a flapper told me once, I'm getting the screaming meamies."
"That's what you mugs get for being so brainy," Van Buskirk put in. With a flick of his massive wrist he brought his thirty-pound spaceax to the "ready" as lightly as though it were a Tellurian dress saber. "Bring on your Overlords—squish! Just like that!" and a whistling sweep of his atrocious weapon was illustration enough.
"May be something in that, too, Bus," he laughed. Then, to the Velantian, "About time to tune in one of 'em, I guess."
He was in no doubt whatever as to Worsel's ability to reach them. He knew that that incredibly powerful mind, without Lens or advanced Arisian instruction, had been able to cover eleven solar systems: he knew that, with his present ability, Worsel could cover half of space!
Although every fiber of his being shrieked protest against contact with the hereditary foe of his race, the Velantian put his mind en rapport with the Overlords and sent out his thought. He listened for seconds, motionless, then glided across the room to the thought-screened pilot and hissed directions. The pilot altered his course sharply and gave her the gun.
"I'll take her over now," Worsel said, presently. "It'll look better that way—more as though they had us all under control."
He cut the Bergenholm, then set everything on zero—the ship hung, inert and practically motionless, in space. Simultaneously twenty unscreened men—volunteers—dashed toward the main air lock, overcome by some intense emotion.
"Now! Screens on! Scramblers!" Kinnison yelled; and at his words a thought-screen enclosed the ship; high-powered scramblers—within whose fields no invisibility apparatus could hold—burst into action. Then the vessel was, right beside the Dauntless, a Boskonian in every line and member!
"Fire!"
But even as she appeared, before a firing-stud could be pressed, the enemy craft almost disappeared again; or rather, she did not really appear at all, except as the veriest wraith of what a good, solid ship of space-alloy ought to be. She was a ghost ship, as unsubstantial as fog. Mist, tenuous, immaterial; the shadow of a shadow. A dream ship, built of the gossamer of dreams, manned by figments of horror recruited from sheerest nightmare. Not invisibility this time, Kinnison knew with a profound shock. Something else—something entirely different—something utterly incomprehensible. Xylpic had said it as nearly as it could be put into understandable words—the Boskonian ship was leaving, although it was standing still! It was monstrous—it couldn't be done!