Hidden in the utter dark of the void they crept up on the Sirians. They were in the sunlight, but the black coating kept them invisible, while the Sirian ships shone brilliantly. Then at last the tip of the great cone formation was within easy striking distance of the fleet. There reached out the strange ray, and here in space it was utterly invisible. But suddenly the ships within its range began to waver, to fall together under mutual gravitation. With one swoop they all shot toward the ships in space that had paralyzed them, for the attractor beams had been turned on them. As the great mass of ships fell rapidly toward them, long range Dis rays reached out, and they melted into clouds of shimmering dust. Great swaths were cut through their ranks. A similar scene was taking place far to the left of the Terrestrian fleet where the Venerian fleet was working havoc among the invaders. Now the last of the ships had been rayed into nothingness and a great fleet of the Sirians were rushing forward to attack for the ships invisible on account of their black line had been electrostatically located now. But as the Sirians came within one hundred miles of the other fleets, the ships all ceased to accelerate, to change direction; they just drifted straight into that cone of Dis rays. All walls of the de-activating field were lined with the ten-man ships, their shorter range Dis rays prevented any Sirians from escaping. Bright lights shone out on the Solarian fleet now—they wanted the Sirians to attack. The original cone formation had shifted rapidly; now it was a double cone; then it changed to a quadruple cone. There were six hundred of the de-activator ships and these were arranged so that they shot their rays off in four directions, making four cones of de-activated space, with the fleet of de-activator ships at the apex. Thus they were protected on all sides, and quickly, as the Sirian fleet spread out, more ships rose and there were six cones branching out. In the center rested the main mass of the fleet, the long range Dis ships, their attractors pointing out into the cones to draw the disabled ships of the Sirians into the range of their Dis rays, emanating in thousands from the ships lining the sides of the de-activated cones of space. The fleet was invulnerable and so sudden and complete was the failure of their power in these de-activated regions, that they did not seem to have time to warn their fellows. Many millions of the ships were lost before the wild charge could be checked; then the six-cone formation entire began to move slowly around; the Sirians, waiting to see what was to happen, were caught before they were aware that they were in danger. Many, too, were caught by the powerful attractor beams of the heavy ships within—drawn in by the greater power of the heavy ship, till their power failed. But at last the Sirians had learned the effective range of this new power and tried hard to avoid it. The six-cone formation was immediately broken up, and the six hundred de-activators went out individually, each followed by a swarm of the ten-man ships to disintegrate the ships caught in the de-activating cones. The Terrestrian ships were marked by a blazing blue light, so that if they too were caught in the de-activating field, they were not disintegrated. Only those around them were, and they were then released, as the ray did not seem to have any injurious effects on man, except to give him strange dreams. In some way the brain was stimulated by the ray, as long as the ray was used.
The de-activator ships were completely self-protecting; they could stop any number of attackers from any direction, provided the paralyzed ships were disintegrated as soon as caught, for if too many were piled up, the tendency of the matter to disintegrate in the engines, plus the natural tendency of the space to resume the normal curvature, caused the ray to become ineffective as it was overpowered, and one ship was lost in this way. Too many ships piled up, and only part of them could be rayed out by the ship itself, and there were not a sufficient number of helping ten-man ships. But the mighty fleet of the Sirians was already beaten. They still outnumbered us ten to one, but they could not fight this new force. They began a running fight to Mars, and now the Solarians were united. Rapidly they wiped out the edges of the fleet, and gradually worked in toward the center. But the Sirians could not fight back—they could use only the explosive shells, and few of them reached their goal. They were disintegrated, or missed. Not more than three thousand men were lost in that entire engagement.
But now the Solarians tried a plan to capture the Sphere. A large number of the ten-man ships dropped out of the main fleet, but not enough to make it noticeable to the hard-pressed Sirians. These were joined by one hundred of the de-activator ships. Then these, all capable of higher speeds than the main fleet, set out at the highest speed that could safely be maintained, and darted toward Mars. Undetected they rushed past the Sirian fleet and passed on toward Mars. They reached the planet fully three hours ahead of the main fleet. By the time the main fleet had arrived, it came unattended, for the last of the mighty fleet of two hundred million torpedo-ships had been turned to impalpable dust, floating in space.
The advance guard arrived without warning, and as they had expected, found the Sphere resting on the ground, protected by a great fleet of the torpedo-ships. There were nearly a million ships there, with the great machines rapidly making more. However, all were grouped in an area that could be covered by the cone of the de-activating beam. And out in space, the ship commanders decided on a plan. Fifty of the de-activator fleet took positions high above the Sirians, and the rest went with the entire fleet of the ten-man ships. These were to approach the camp from the ground. Lying close to the ground, they would be hard to see in the disappearing light. At a fixed moment, all the ships above were to turn on their de-activator rays, which would be plainly visible in the Martian atmosphere, while the ground fleet of fifty de-activators were to use their rays from the side. The ten-man ships were to form a circle around the camp at a safe distance from the de-activator rays, for they would crash when their power failed, if they were caught by the de-activator rays. But they wanted to capture the sphere in good condition, so they arranged to have the space directly above it unaffected by the de-activator field, lest some torpedo fall on it and destroy it. This would leave an exit for the torpedo-ships, except that at a point a mile or so above the Sphere, a cross-ray made escape impossible.
The rays were turned on. Instantly the fleet of nearly a million torpedo-ships fell wildly out of control, down through the blue glowing air, in which great streamers of glowing red seemed to waver and twist. Just outside the curtain of destruction waited the entire Solarian fleet. Slowly they closed in till their Dis rays swept all the ships within sixty miles of the edge out of existence; then rapidly the de-activator beams were forced ever sharper and sharper, till at last only the Sphere and a few hundred of the torpedo-ships, several hundred of the torpedo-ship constructors, and the corresponding cargo ships and worker machines were left. These had been saved for investigation by the scientists, for they were helpless.
But the war was over now. The Sirians had been destroyed, or reduced to mere museum pieces. Now the Scientists came to investigate the Sphere. There was much we wanted to learn from the creatures of the Sphere. But it was a strange story that the Sirian sphere had to tell.
Aeons ago there lived on a great planet of Sirius a race of intelligent men, shaped as we are, but smaller due to the greater gravity of their planet. And these men had developed a high civilization, a civilization different from ours, in that they learned early about mechanics, but chemistry and physics merely developed from the needs of the great mechanical engineers. Electricity was used as a powerful aid in their machines, and in their processes; it was a by-product, not an end.
Gradually their machines eliminated more and more of their work; they became more and more complicated, but more and more trustworthy. Men began to experiment with physics and found that their calculating machines needed development. It was easy to add first one step, then the next. More and more the machines could do. The mathematics became more and more complicated, and the machines developed the equations, found they could not handle them and passed them out as unfinished results. Finally one man used the machines to calculate the design of a machine that would be able to do these new equations. He built it, but the calculations were wrong. The machine had correctly solved his problem, but he had stated it wrong. It resulted in a machine that would solve only simple problems, but it did something no other machine had ever done. Given irrelevant data it would choose the correct facts and solve the problem. It was a step, a short step toward a machine that really thought.
Progress thereafter was rapid. The machines built machines, had been doing it for decades in fact, but now they did one thing more—they designed them. Now the problem could describe the type of machine needed, and the worker machine would design it, and turn out the completed machine! But these machines were rapidly perfecting the beginning that man had made. Within a decade after that first discovery of the principles of mechanical thought the machine was made that could not only solve problems, but could also originate them. They had developed a brain. It was a great machine, which occupied an entire building, with its massive framework bolted down to the ground.