He knew that he was due to black out as soon as he let go, and he intended to addle the thing's senses so thoroughly that he would be completely out of action for hours—long enough to give the Lensman plenty of time in which to recover his strength.
He did so.
Kinnison did not quite faint. He did, however, have to lie down flat upon the floor; as limp, almost, as the dead men so thickly strewn about.
And thus, while the two immense Grand Fleets met in battle, Boskonia's flagship hung inert and silent in space afar; manned by fifteen hundred corpses, one unconscious Brain, and one utterly exhausted Gray Lensman.
XXI.
Boskonia's Grand Fleet was, as has been said, enormous. It was not as large as the Patrol in total number of ships, since no ordinary brain nor any possible combination of such brains could have co-ordinated and directed the activities of so vast a number of units. Its center was, however, heavier; composed of a number and a tonnage of supermaulers which made it self-evidently irresistible.
In his training of his Grand Fleet operations staff, Kinnison had not overlooked a single bet, had not made a single move which by its falsity might have excited Premier Fossten's all-too-ready suspicions. They had handled Grand Fleet as a whole in vast, slow maneuvers; plainly the only kind possible to so tremendous a force. Kinnison and his officers had in turn harshly and thoroughly instructed the subfleet commanders in the various arts and maneuvers of conquering units equal to or smaller than their own.
That was all; and to the Boskonians, even to Fossten, that had been enough. That was obviously all that was possible. Not one of them realized that Tyrant Gannel very carefully avoided any suggestion that there might be any intermediate tactics, such as that of three or four hundred subfleets, too widely spread in space and too numerous to be handled by any ordinary mind or apparatus to inglobe and to wipe out simultaneously perhaps fifty subfleets whose commanders were not even in communication with each other. This technique was as yet the exclusive property of the Patrol and the Z9M9Z.
And in that exact operation, a closed book to the zwilniks, lay—supposedly and tactically—the Patrol's overwhelming advantage. For Haynes, through his four highly specialized Rigellian Lensmen and thence through the two hundred Rigellian operator-computers, could perform maneuvers upon any intermediate scale he pleased. He could handle his whole vast Grand Fleet and its every component part—he supposed—as effectively, as rapidly, and almost as easily as a skilled chess player handles his pieces and his pawns. Neither Kinnison nor Haynes can be blamed, however, for the fact that their suppositions were somewhat in error; it would have taken an Arisian to deduce that this battle was not to be fought exactly as they had planned it.