Down on the forepeak in the sodden dull-green light, I could see the crew raising the electronic gun-carriages into position now. They were quite evidently of the most modern Edretch type, squat projectors with grid faces fitted into vacuum firing portes on each side of the forepeak. Guns undoubtedly with an effective range of some five hundred Earth-miles.
X-flyer going into action. The crew, with their dead putty-colored faces, moved, silently in the soundless ship. Up here in the turret with us, Jerome's hollow voice was gloating:
"That fool patrolship—they have seen us vanish. They know now who their adversary is. Want to see them, Fanning?"
There was no need of a telescope now. A magnified image of the oncoming patrolship as seen through one of the little barrage-vents on our bow, was spread here on a grid-screen in the control turret. Fascinated with horror, I watched it—the foreshortened looming bow of the patrolship clearly outlined against the black velvet of the firmament. It had seen us vanish, had turned and was heading straight for where it had last seen us! Even as I watched, the image of it was visibly enlarging. A thousand miles away now, probably. But almost in a moment it would be within range!
Then the wily Jerome abruptly swung us sharply. He was still at his gravity-control levers. The starfield rolled sidewise as we turned in a great hundred-mile arc. The maneuver was obvious. The patrolship had marked our position. Jerome quite evidently was not sure what range-guns his adversary had. He was taking no chances that a premature shot, aimed by calculation at where we might be, would strike us.
Patrolship-3 had guns very similar to these which I saw now being erected here on the X-flyer. It could have been a fairly even battle, a test of electronic battery-strength, of astronomical skill, of reckless daring—and yet, against an invisible enemy it could be no fight at all! I knew the commander of Patrolship-3 well. A stalwart, youngish fellow named Rollins. A man of infinite skill, reckless daring. I could picture him now in the turret of his ship, with his mouth set grim and his eyes flashing as he hurtled his little vessel forward. At what? Nothing but an apparently empty starfield from some unknown quarter of which a sudden stab of bolt would leap to strike him! I knew what Commander Rollins was thinking now. He would watch for that first bolt, and if it did not wreck his ship he would fire at the blankness from whence the shot had come. His only chance. An almost hopeless one. And yet he had done his best to hurl himself at us.
We were circling now. And suddenly it seemed that Rollins' ship, with its side spread toward us, off there at some five hundred miles, was slackening its velocity. Like a lion at bay, stopping, waiting with an invisible soundless wasp encircling it.
One of the gunners down in our forepeak signaled up to Jerome.
"Not yet," Jerome called. "When we strike, it must smash. There must not even be a chance of an answering shot."