"Not 'just as though,'" Haynes declared. "We are going through with it. Find a planet on the outer edge of a spiral arm, as nearly like Tellus as possible—"
"Make it nearly enough like Tellus and maybe I can use it for our headquarters on this 'co-ordinator' thing." And Kinnison grinned.
"More truth than poetry in that, fellow. We find it and take it over. Comb out the zwilniks with a fine-tooth comb. Make it the biggest, toughest base the Universe ever saw—like Jarnevon, only more so. Bring in everything we've got and expand from that planet as a center, cleaning everything out as we go. We'll civilize 'em!"
And so, after considerable ultrarange communicator work, it was decided that the Galactic Patrol would forthwith assume the offensive.
Haynes assembled the Fleet. Then, while the two black speedsters kept unobtrusively on with the task of plotting the line, Civilization's mighty armada moved a few thousand parsecs aside and headed at normal touring blast for the nearest out-cropping of the Second Galaxy.
There was nothing of stealth in this maneuver, nothing of finesse, excepting in the arrangements of the units. First, far in the van, flew the prodigious, irregular cone of scout cruisers. They were comparatively small, not heavily armed or armored, but they were ultrafast and were provided with the most powerful detectors, spotters and locators known. They adhered to no rigid formation, but at the will of their individual commanders, under the direct supervision of Grand Fleet Operations in the Z9M9Z, flashed hither and thither ceaselessly—searching, investigating, mapping, reporting.
Backing them up came the light cruisers and the cruising bombers—a new type, this latter, designed primarily to bore in to close quarters and to hurl bombs of negative matter. Third in order were the heavy defensive cruisers. These ships had been developed specifically for hunting down Boskonian commerce raiders within the Galaxy. They wore practically an impenetrable screen, so that they could lock to and hold even a superdreadnought. They had never before been used in Grand Fleet formation; but since they were now equipped with tractor zones and bomb tubes, theoretical strategy found a good use for them in this particular place.
Next came the real war head—a solidly packed phalanx of maulers. All the ships up ahead had, although in varying degrees, freedom of motion and of action. The scouts had practically nothing else; fighting was not their business. They could fight, a little, if they had to; but they always ran away if they could, in whatever direction was most expedient at the time. The cruising bombers could either take their fighting or leave it alone, depending upon circumstances—in other words, they fought light cruisers, but ran away from big stuff, stinging as they ran. The heavy cruisers would fight anything short of a mauler, but never in formation: they always broke ranks and fought individual dog fights, ship-to-ship.
But that terrific spearhead of maulers had no freedom of motion whatever. It knew only one direction—straight ahead. It would swerve aside for an inert planet, but for nothing smaller; and when it swerved it did so as a whole, not by parts. Its function was to blast through—straight through—any possible opposition, if and when that opposition should have been successful in destroying or dispersing the screens of lesser vessels preceding it. A sunbeam was the only conceivable weapon with which that stolid, power-packed mass of metal could not cope; and, the Patrolmen devoutly hoped, the zwilniks didn't have any sunbeams—yet.