And the view screen was suddenly an incandescent patch of unbearable brilliance that burned all vision from Nord Holber's brain—brought his eyelids down instinctively over throbbing eyes! He reeled in his seat, head spinning, stomach writhing, and realization more sickening than physical agony in his mind.
Kadine had blinded them with a blast of his retarding jets! It was an old trick—a veteran space-fighter's trick that took the cool nerve of blasting your ship's nose forward into your enemy's ray, shielding your own eyes from his aft jets, until you were so close your nose almost covered his view screen, then—Risky, but it gained several precious seconds!
Seconds in which to strike! Nord's jaw was a piece of sculptured white rock against which the sagging muscles of his face drew themselves taut. His eyes—they had to open! He had to see! Kadine would use the seconds.
Holber's eyelids came up slowly, and he lifted his head, suddenly several times its weight, toward the view screen. The cabin swam before him—a confusion of grey and black shadows. He had an impression of a distorted blotch beside him, and he heard Mike cursing madly.
"Can't see, Nord! Can't get my eyes open!"
"Hold on, Mike!"
The blacker shadow beside him lurched, and he heard his partner stumble back to a sitting position. This his eyes were focusing again, painfully, on a blurred patch of black, dotted with painful pinpoints of brilliant blue-white—on the screen. The black began to thicken, harden about the stars—it was torn to shreds by a fiery nova! Kadine's heat ray was eating into the stern of the Patrol Ship!