The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their pre-arranged observing positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The light cruisers and the cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill struck at Haynes' stout old heart as he learned that the enemy did have negative-matter bombs.
Upon that point there had been much discussion. One view was that the Boskonians would have them, since they had seen them in action and since their scientists were fully as capable as were those of Civilization. The other was that, since it had taken all the massed intellect of the Conference of Scientists to work out a method of handling and of propelling such bombs, and since the Boskonians were probably not as co-operative as were the civilized races, they could not have them.
Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers. This was deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved problems which theoretical strategy could not solve definitely. Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a conventional light cruiser of equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time, provided—here was the rub!—that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of the ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe, in order to accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to be decreased—something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary beams, or of defensive screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so increased that the ship would no longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy one.
And the Patrol's psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which they had gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from various and sundry spools of tape—ideas by virtue of which it was eminently possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the light cruisers of the foe, even though they should turn out to be negative-matter bombers.
Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not thoroughly sold upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the commanders of his standard light cruisers had received very explicit and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have bombs and if the high-brows' ideas did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional instructions.
Haynes had not really believed that the enemy would have negabombs, they were so new and so atrociously difficult to handle. He wanted—but was unable—to believe implicitly in the psychologists' findings. Therefore, as soon as he saw what was happening, he abandoned his tank for a moment to seize a plate and get into full touch with the control room of one of the conventional light cruisers then going into action.
He watched it drive boldly toward a Boskonian vessel which was in the act of throwing bombs. He saw that the agile little vessel's tractor zone was out. He watched the bombs strike that zone and bounce. He watched the tractor men go to work and he saw the psychologists' idea bear splendid fruit. For what followed was a triumph, not of brute force and striking power, but of morale and manhood. The brain men had said, and it was now proved, that the Boskonian gunners, low class as they were and driven to their tasks like the slaves they were, would hesitate long enough before using tractor beams as pressors so that the Patrolmen could take their own bombs away from them!
For negative matter, it must be remembered, is the exact opposite of ordinary matter. It is built up of negative mass; in every equation of physics and mechanics where mass appears, a minus sign appears when negative matter is concerned. To it a pull is, or becomes, a push; the tractor beam which pulls ordinary matter toward its projector actually pushes negative matter away.
The "boys" of the Patrol knew that fact thoroughly. They knew all about what they were doing, and why. They were there because they wanted to be, as Illona had so astoundingly found out, and they worked with their officers, not because of them. With the Patrol's gun crews it was a race to see which crew could capture the first bomb and the most.