"What in all the purple hells of Palain did you do, Haynes, and how?" demanded the Z9M9Z's captain.
"He used the whole damned solar system as a vacuum tube!" Haynes explained, gleefully. "Those power stations out there, with all their motors and intake screens, are simply the power leads. The asteroid belts, and maybe some of the planets, are the grids and plates. The sun is—"
"Hold on, chief!" Kinnison broke in. "That isn't quite it. You see, the directive field set up by the—"
"Hold on yourself!" Haynes ordered, brusquely. "You're too damned scientific, just like Sawbones Lacy. What do Rex and I care about technical details that we can't understand, anyway? The net result is what counts—and that was to concentrate upon those planets practically the whole energy output of the Sun. Wasn't it?"
"Well, that's the main idea," Kinnison conceded. "The energy equivalent, roughly, of four million one hundred and fifty thousand tons per second of disintegrating matter."
"Whew!" the captain whistled. "No wonder it frizzled 'em up."
"I can say now, I think, with no fear of successful contradiction, that Tellus is strongly held," Haynes stated, with conviction. "What now, Kim, old son?"
"I think they're done, for a while," the Gray Lensman pondered. "Cardynge can't communicate through the tube, so probably they can't; but if they managed to slip an observer through, they may know how almighty close they came to licking us. On the other hand, Verne says that he can get the bugs out of the sunbeam in a couple of weeks—and when he does, the next zwilnik he cuts loose at is going to get a surprise."
"I'll say so," Haynes agreed. "We'll keep the surveyors on the prowl, and some of the Fleet will always be close by. Not all of it, of course—we'll adopt a schedule of reliefs—but enough of it to be useful. That ought to be enough, don't you think?"
"I think so—yes," Kinnison answered, thoughtfully. "I'm just about positive that they won't be in shape to start anything here again for a long time. And I had better get busy, sir, on my own job—I've got to put out a few jets."