"stevens ganymede will arrive in about ten hours direct carrier beam toward sun we can detect it and will follow it to wherever you are sirius."
"ipv sirius," came the reply, "everything here, all x glad to see you thanks newton and stevens."
Brandon, at the controls, scanning his screens narrowly, dropped the vessel down to within a mile or two of the point of origin of Stevens' carrier beam without incident; then spoke to Westfall, at his side, with a grin.
"Nice layout the kid's got down there, Quince. It's too bad—don't look like we're going to get any action for our money a-tall. 'Sa shame, too—what's the use of wasting it, now that we've got it all made?"
"We are not done yet," cautioned Westfall, and even as he spoke an alarm bell burst into strident clamor—one of their far-flung detector screens was telling the world that it had encountered a dangerous frequency. The new ultra-lights flared instantly along the line automatically laid down by the detector, and upon the closely ruled micrometer screen of Brandon's desk there glowed in natural color the image of a globular space-ship, approaching them with terrific speed.
"Men all stationed, of course, Crown?"
"Stationed and ready." Crowninshield, phones at his ears and microphone at his lips, was staring intently into his own plate.
"Kinda think I'll do most of it from here, but you can't always tell. If they get inside my guard you all know what to do."
"All x."
Expecting another such hollow victory as the other Hexan vessel had won over the defenseless Arcturus, the small stranger flashed nearer and nearer that huge and featureless football of armor steel. Within range, she launched her flaming plane of energy, but this time that Jovian sheet of force did not encounter unprotected and non-resisting steel. Upon the outer ray-screen, flaming white into incandescent defense, the furious bolt spent itself, and in the instant of the launching of the searing blade of flame, Brandon had gone into action. Switch after switch drove home, and one after another those frightful fields of force, those products of the mightiest minds of three planets, were hurled out against the tiny Jovian sphere. Driven as they were by the millions upon millions of horsepower stored in the accumulators of the Sirius they formed a coruscating spherical shell of intolerable energy all around the enemy vessel, but even their prodigious force was held at bay by the powerful defensive screens of the smaller space-ship. But attack the Jovian could not, every resource at her command being necessary to fend off the terrific counter-attack of her intended prey, and she turned in flight. Small and agile as she was, the enormous mass of the Sirius precluded any possibility of maneuvering with the Jovian, but Brandon had no intention of maneuvering. Rapid as the motions of the stranger were and frantic as was her dodging, the terrific forces of the tractor beams of the Interplanetary Vessel held her in an unbreakable grip, and although she dragged the massive Sirius hither and thither, she could not escape.