"You gotta stay in here and hope they pitch to your call," said Williamson.
Twelve minutes later, the Mephistan fleet came into long-detector range, and the entire Terran fleet opened fire. The heavies, still circling the fleet, took up the job as soon as they came into range, and the space between became filled with flashes of fire as crossed MacMillan beams neutralized one another and spent their mighty energies in light and heat. The power rooms of the ships became a noisy clatter of automatically opening and closing circuit breakers as the MacMillan overloads worked the safety-circuits. Now and then the ultra-loud clamor of the fuse alarms rang out above the chattering racket, and the power gangs worked furiously to replace master line-fuses while the rest of the ship fumed and fretted without power for offense or defense.
The heavies—the sluggers—got between the constellation ships and the Mephistans, and their super-powered AutoMacs outfought the lighter turret-mounts of the Mephistans.
They took their long-range toll, and then as the Mephistans came into torpedo range, the sluggers fell back through the open-work pattern of the constellation ships. From here on in, the omni-powerful battlecraft would have to face battle with every weapon.
Unleashed energy filled the gap between the fleets, and the sky below the decelerating ships became a blazing graveyard of ruin as the ships lost drive and went free, falling ahead of the main body.
Word flashed through the Terran fleet that the Centuriad II had discovered the interference frequency of the Mephistan torpedoes. Technicians in all Terran ships shifted their transmitters to the called frequency, and the torpedoes lost their aiming perfection.
But they were not safe.
Wandering torpedoes continued to roam in among the Terran fleet and touched off fountains of flame and death.
Then from point-blank range, the sub-ships of Terra flashed in through the Mephistan fleet. In one great swarm they came. From the virtual zero of the detectors—that in-close distance that limited the minimum range—torpedoes dropped into being from nowhere and hit full upon ship after ship.