Behind the embattled lines of the Mephistans, Martian craft landed. Martian sluggers, Martian power-craft, Martian constellation class super battlecraft. And as they were landing, and getting set for an open battle, the Terran forces lined up behind the thin line that flanked Orionad.
It was a situation that made Maynard start. For years, no real action had ever been fought between the two forces. Sorties, scrapes, incidents; these had been the sum total of the trouble between the denizens of two worlds. Ream upon ream had been written concerning theoretical battle-plans for war against Mars, and in the Martian pictographs, equally large quantities of ink and paper went into the libraries on how to fight Terra.
Guy realized: Here it is!
The power ships of the two forces faced one another across ten miles of plain. Above the heads of each roved the tiny fighters, and above this cover, reaching up far into the realm of space, were rising the battlecraft.
Planet forces began to move against one another, right through the unseen death that roved from the MacMillans on the tractors and the moving pillboxes. Space above the battleground filled with a continuously exploding roar, and sheets of released energy flares at the meeting points of crossed MacMillans.
The constellation ships fenced momentarily, and then roared forward into full battle. The sluggers stood back and threw the might of their energy from long range. Tiny fighters raced forward, depending upon speed, mobility, and minuteness to escape the wary detector-coupled AutoMacs.
Sight became impossible. The flaring of explosive and raw energy seared the eye that dared to look, and when the flaring light stopped by chance, the rising wreaths of smoke, steam, and incandescent vapor obscured the vision. Lightnings flashed in and through this cloud, and the instruments became wabbly.