"Maybe I'm nuts, but it wouldn't surprise me if he'd start doing a flit pretty quick. I've got a CRX tracer on him, just in case, and it might be smart to caution Henderson to keep up on his toes."
"Your diagnosis—'nuts'—is correct, I think," came the answering thought; but the port admiral followed the suggestion, nevertheless.
And none too soon. Deliberately, grandly, the Colossus was leaning over, bowing in stately fashion toward the awful lake in which it stood. But only so far. Then there was a flash, visible even in the inferno of energies already there at war, and the already coruscant lava was hurled to all points of the compass as the full-blast drive of a superdreadnought was cut loose beneath its surface!
To the eye the thing simply and instantly disappeared; but not to the ultra-vision of the observers' plates, and especially not to the CRX tracers attached by Kinnison and by Henderson. They held, and the chief pilot, already warned, was on the trail as fast as he could punch his keys.
Through atmosphere, through stratosphere, into interplanetary space flew pursued and pursuer at ever-increasing speed. The Dauntless overtook her proposed victim fairly easily. The Boskonian was fast, but the Patrol's new flier was the fastest thing in space. But tractors would not hold against the now universal standard equipment of shears, and the heavy secondaries served only to push the fleeing vessel along all the faster. And the dreadful primary beams could not be used—yet.
"Not yet," cautioned the admiral. "Don't get too close—wait until there's nothing detectable in space."
Finally an absolutely empty region was entered, the word to close up was given, and Prellin drank of the bitter cup which so many commanders of vessels of the Patrol had had to drain—the gallingly fatal necessity of engaging a ship which was both faster and more powerful than his own. The Boskonian tried, of course. His beams raged out at full power against the screens of the larger ship, but without effect. Three primaries lashed out as one. The fleeing vessel, structure and contents, ceased to be. The Dauntless returned to the torn and ravaged city.
The maulers had gone. The lumbering caterpillars—what were left of them—were clanking away; reeking, smoking hot in every plate and member. Only the firemen were left, working like Trojans with explosives, rays, water, carbon-dioxide snow, clinging and smothering chemicals; anything and everything which would isolate, absorb, or dissipate any portion of the almost incalculable heat energy so recently and so profligately released.
Fire apparatus from four planets was at work. There were pumpers, ladder trucks, hose and chemical trucks. There were men in heavily insulated armor. Vehicles and men alike were screened against the specific wave lengths of heat; and under the direction of a fire marshal in his red speedster high in air they fought methodically and efficiently the conflagration which was the aftermath of battle. They fought, and they were winning.