"Great Cat, there's Breckenridge!" he gasped, and directed a lifting beam upon the bound and unconscious prisoner. Rapidly, but carefully, he was brought through the double airlock and into the control room, where his shackles were cut away and where he soon revived under vigorous and skilful treatment.
"Any more of you in there? Did I hit any of you with that beam?" demanded Brandon, intensely, as soon as Breckenridge showed signs of understanding.
"King's in there somewhere, and there's a Callistonian human being that you mustn't kill," the chief pilot replied, weakly and with great effort in every word. "Don't believe that you hit anybody direct, but the shock was pretty bad." Having delivered his message, he lay back, exhausted.
"All x. Crown, give me a squad...."
"Not on your life!" barked the general. "This is my job and I'll do it myself. Your job is fighting the Sirius—stay with it!"
"Not in seven thousand years—I'm in on this, too," Brandon protested, but was decisively overruled by Newton.
"You belong right here at this board, since no one else can handle it the way you can. Stay here!" he commanded.
"All right," grudgingly assented the physicist, and held the Sirius upright, with her needle-sharp stern buried a few feet deep in the ground.
He watched the wreckage jealously while Crowninshield and forty helmeted men issued from the service door in the lower ultra-light compartment and advanced upon the two halves of the enemy vessel. As no hostile demonstrations ensued, scaling ladders were quickly placed and with weapons at the alert the police boarded the hemispheres, manacled the still helpless beings visible, and, after laying down a fog of stupefying gas, vanished into compartments beyond the metal partitions. After a short time they reappeared and climbed down the scaling ladders, carrying several inert forms, and Brandon spoke into his transmitter.
"King all x, Crowninshield?"