"Sixty!" It rolled in space, forming an immense cylinder; the doomed planet the midpoint of its axis.
"Sixty-one!" Tractors and pressors leaped out, from ship to ship and from ship to shore. The Patrol did not know whether or not the scientists of the Eich could render their planet inertialess, but now it made no difference. Planet and fleet were for the time being one rigid system.
"Sixty-two—blast!" And against the world-girdling battlements of Jarnevon there flamed out in all their appalling might the dreadful beams against which the defensive webs of battleships and of mobile citadels alike had been so pitifully inadequate.
But these which they were attacking now were not the limited installations of a mobile structure. The Eich had at their command all the resources of a galaxy. Their generators and conductors could be of any desired number and size. Hence Eichmil, in view of prior happenings, had strengthened the defenses of his planet to a point which certain of his fellows derided as being beyond the bounds of sanity or reason.
Now those unthinkably powerful screens were being tested to the utmost. Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck against them, spitting mile-long sparks in baffled fury as they raged to ground. Plain and incased in Q-type helices they came; biting, tearing, gouging. Often and often, under the thrust of half a dozen at once, local failures appeared; but these were only momentary, and not even the newly devised shells of the projectors could stand the load long enough to penetrate effectively Boskone's indescribably capable defenses. Nor were the enemies' offensive weapons less capable.
Rods, cones, planes, and shears of pure force bored, cut, stabbed, and slashed. Bombs and dirigible torpedoes charged to the skin with duodec sought out the red-cloaked ships. Beams, sheathed against atmosphere in Q-type helices, crashed against and through their armor—beams of an intensity almost to rival that of the Patrol's primary weapons and of a hundred times their effective aperture. And not singly did those beams come. Eight, ten, twelve at once they clung to and demolished dreadnought after dreadnought of the Expeditionary Force.
Eichmil was well content. "We can hold them and we are burning them down!" he gloated. "Let them loose their negative-matter bombs! Get the analysis of those beams—build them! They are burning out projectors, which means that they cannot keep this up indefinitely. They will have to retire, what there are left of them, for more munitions; and when they come back we will blast them out of space!"
He was wrong. Grand Fleet did not stay there long enough so that even the projectors of the Eich could destroy more than a few thousands of ships. For even while the cylinder was forming, Kinnison was in rapid but careful consultation with Thorndyke, checking intrinsic velocities, directions, and speeds.
"QX, Verne—cut!" he yelled.