In the fraction of a second before the Jovians could detect the attack and close the slit, he saw a portion of the wall of their vessel flare into white heat and literally explode outward in puffs and gouts of flaming, molten metal and of incandescent gases. But the thrust, savage as it was, had not been fatal and the enemy countered instantly. Now that the crushing force of the full-coverage attack was lessened for a moment, through another slit there poured a beam of energy equal to the Terrestrials' own—a beam of such intense power that the outer screen of the Sirius flared from red through the spectrum, to and beyond the violet, and went black in less than a second, and the inner screen had almost gone down before Brandon's lightning hands could restore the complete coverage that so effectively blanketed the forces of the enemy.
"Well, we're back to the status quo," announced Brandon, calmly. "It's a good gag they didn't have time to locate our working slit—if they had pushed that stuff through our open channel, we'd have gotten frizzled up some around the edges. As it was, we got the edge on that exchange—take it from your Uncle Dudley, Quince, that bird knows that he's been nudged!"
Again he searched the entire band for an opening, but could find none. The enemy had apparently retired into a tightly closed shell of energy. The small vessel no longer struggled, nor even moved, but was merely resisting passively.
"Not an open channel, not even one for him to work through—he can't wiggle. Well, that won't get him anything. We're so much bigger than he is, that we can outlast him and will get him some time, since he's bound to run out of power before we do. I don't believe he can receive anything, sealed up as he is, and he can't have accumulators enough more efficient than ours to make up the difference, can he, Quince?"
"It is quite possible. For instance, although we have never heard of any progress being made along such lines, it has been pointed out repeatedly that synthesis of a radio-active element of very high atomic weight would theoretically yield an almost perfect accumulator—one many thousands of times as efficient as ours in mass-to-energy ratio. Then, too, you realize, of course, that there is a bare possibility that intra-atomic energy may not be absolutely impossible."
"Nix on that, Quince. I'll stand for a lot, but not for that last idea! It's hard to say that anything's impossible, of course, except things made so by definition or by being contrary to observational facts, but the best work shows that intra-atomic energy is just about as impossible as anything can well be. It has been shown pretty conclusively that all ordinary matter is already in its most stable state, so that work must be done upon any ordinary atom to decompose it. Besides, if he had either radioactive accumulators or intra-atomic energy, he would have cut us up long ago. Nope, the answer is that he's probably yelled for help and is trying to hold out until it gets here," was Brandon's rejoinder.
"What can we do about it?" asked Quince.
"Don't know yet. I do know, though, that we aren't half as ready for trouble as I thought we were. There's a dozen things I want to do that I can't because we haven't got the stuff. Don't say 'I told you so,' either—I know you did! You're the champion ground-and-lofty thinker of the century. Alcantro!"
"Here!"
"Round up the gang, will you, and figure me out a screen and a set of meters that will indicate an open band? We lose too much time feeling around anyhow, and we're too apt to take one on the chin while we're doing it. Also, you ought to make it so it'll shoot a jolt into the opening, while you're at it," said Brandon.