We can only admire the wise action of the Commandant of the Venerian fleet, Mals Hotark, in not sending his pitiful fleet of a few thousand out to fight with the Sirians. The members wanted to, the people of Venus wanted him to, but he wisely waited until he saw the fleets of the System approaching. It would have done no good, and lost many lives, and valuable ships to have gone in advance to the attack.
Many people tried to leave Venus, but enough machines were freed of the task of stopping the orbital motion of the planet to patrol the heavens and keep the people from leaving. They beamed thousands of private cars out of existence; it seemed unnecessarily cruel.
The two great fleets were drawing nearer to the planet, converging, and at last they got so close that they could carry on a radio communication by using the terrific power of over two billion kilowatts of energy. The amount of power that Sirian machine was throwing off has been estimated at a minimum of fifty billion kilowatts. We know that enough power could be picked up from a hundred meter aerial on Earth to operate a small, high frequency motor.
When radio communication was established, they agreed to wait until they could join, for the fleet from Earth was two hours ahead of the main fleet. The loss of time was made up for in greater efficiency of action. They would need it all. At last they joined fleets, one mighty disc of two million airships, they flew on through space at a steady rate of five and three-quarter million miles an hour. They arranged themselves in a mighty cone as they came nearer Venus. Already the machines had slowed it down so greatly that the planet was over a million miles out of her orbit, and rapidly adding to this mileage.
But now as the great cone approached, the great ships with the long range Dis rays leading, they were discovered. The cone formation was chosen, for that is the three dimensional equivalent of the two dimensional V that man had used in war on earth for thousands of years.
Now began the greatest battle in the history of the System. Here were two mighty forces slashing at each other with terrific disintegration rays, fighting in the great Void, and five million powerful ships darting around, slashing, stabbing with a death that struck with the quickness of light.
As the great cone of the main fleet attacked from one side, there was a smaller cone attacking the Sirians from the other, but long before the Sirians could bring their rays into effect the long range rays had torn great holes in their ranks. The Sphere had retired with its escort at once, going swiftly to Mars. The main fleet was too busily engaged in fighting the Sirians' main fleet to worry about the Sphere at present.
A dozen times the great spinning sphere formation was tried by the Sirians, but each time a withering blast of the long range Dis ray cut it up as a tool held against a spinning block of wood cuts it down in the lathe. Their strongest formation was useless, and they could no longer outmaneuver the Solarians, the new ships could turn and dart as quickly as they, or even more quickly. The big Dis ray ships were not equipped for fast fighting, so when there were none of the spinning sphere formations to break up, they retired to a safe distance, and waited for any ships that might attack them. Few did. It proved suicidal. But steadily the forces of man were conquering. In a hell of flashing Dis rays, the new ships were proving their worth. The flaming rays had seared the land below for many miles, but the fleet of the Sirians was fast going. The new fast ships of man could dodge the rays of the Sirians, turn and dart on the tail of their attacker, then hang there, the attractor beam giving them an added grip until they could flash the machine into nothingness with the Dis ray. They turned, ducked, darted ahead with terrific speed, suddenly stopped, and then were going full speed again. And another Sirian ship was gone. Now it was the delicate apparatus of the Sirians' ships that suffered; they could not keep up with the sudden turns of this flexible adversary. And their great fleet had been reduced to a scant quarter million, but we had lost nearly a half million ships, five million men, in that Titanic struggle. Such a battle could not last long. It was impossible. Nothing could stand before the Dis rays, and with those turning, darting ships, sooner or later every ship must come under the influence of those rays. But now the last of the torpedo-ships were fleeing into space. But we did not care to have to fight them again—and they too were rayed out of being. They could no longer dart away from us before we could catch them—that was for us now!
But now the fleet returned to a greater task. Venus had been falling toward the sun, and was nearly a million and a quarter miles off and within her orbit. Now a great fleet of cargo carriers from Mars, Venus and Earth came up, and with them came wrecker ships, capable of picking up on their powerful attractor beams an entire million-ton passenger-freight liner—great liners themselves, all equipped with attractor beams. Soon they were all using their power to bring the planet back to its normal speed. It did not take the ships of that mighty fleet, many specially designed for heavy listing and towing, many designed for tremendous loads, very long to bring the planet back to its age-old orbit.