Greg sat down and looked at Russ. "Funny thing about this. They just sat
there and let us throw two charges at them, took everything we gave them
and never tried to hand it back."
"Maybe they haven't anything to hand us," Russ suggested hopefully.
"They must have. Craven wouldn't take to space with just a purely
defensive weapon. He knew we'd find him and he'd have a fight on his
hands."
Russ found his pipe was dead. Snapping his lighter, he applied flame to
the blackened tobacco. Walking slowly to the wall cabinet, he lifted two
other boxes out, set them on the table and took from them two other
mechanical shadows. He turned them on and leaned close, watching the
spinning dials, the quivering needles.
"Greg," he whispered, "Chambers and Stutsman are there in that ship with
Craven! Look, their shadows register identical with the one that spotted
Craven."
"I suspected as much," Greg replied. "We got the whole pack cornered out
here. If we can just get rid of them, the whole war would be won in one
stroke."
Russ lifted a stricken face from the row of tiny mechanisms. "This is
our big chance. We may never get it again. The next hour could decide
who is going to win."
Greg rose from the chair and stood before the control board. Grimly he
punched a series of keys. The engines howled again. Greg twisted a dial
and the howl rose into a shrill scream.
From the _Invincible_ another beam lashed out ... another and another.
Space was speared with beam after beam hurtling from the great ship.
Swiftly the beams went through the range of radiation, through radio and
short radio, infra-red, visible light, ultra-violet, X-ray, the gammas
and the cosmics--a terrific flood of billions of horsepower.
Craven's ship buckled and careened under the lashing impacts of the
bombardment, but it seemed unhurt!
Greg's face was bleaker than usual as he turned from the board to look
at Russ.
"We've used everything we have," he said, "and he's stopped them all. We
can't touch him."
* * * * *
Russ shivered. The control room suddenly seemed chilly with a
frightening kind of cold.
"He's carrying photo-cells and several thousand tons of accumulator
stacks. Not much power left in them. He could pour a billion horsepower
into them for hours and still have room for more."