"I know. But there'll be no rest for any of us until this fight is finished. Come on, Ben. Let's get moving. We've got a job to do."
XII.
Guy put the alien instrument in his personal locker and went to see how the battle was coming. Out across the face of Mephisto, he saw the battle machinery locked in mobile death with the huge, alien machines of Mephisto.
The ground was strewn with smoking ruin, and Guy saw with horrified gratification that the ruined machinery was all on the Terran side of the battleground—which meant that his ring of offense was advancing. The energy bombs were bursting above the planethead, and the sky was filled with blinding light. Sub-ships fell as their drive was burned by the entrapped energy within the barriers, and Guy wondered how many men were getting energy burns from the terrific radiation from the energy bombs.
Orionad, standing in the circle of planeted ships, was dealing power blows from the turrets, and beams of energy—just energy—were roving the sky to saturate the barrier-protected sub-ships. Now and then a MacMillan beam would touch one of the sub-ships unawares, and there would be a terrific blast as the entire ship exploded instantly.
Then Guy saw his forces waver slightly, fall back, and then go down in a terrible wave of destruction from massed sub-ships.
Again they retreated, and as the next wave dropped, they expended their energy on nothing but the bald surface of Mephisto. The solid ice of Mephisto boiled into great clouds of vapor and liquid water ran across Mephisto's face for the first time.
The vapor clouded operations—for both.
One sub-ship scraped Mephisto—broke the barrier, and slid through a crashing pile of accumulating rubble to a destructive stop.