XXIV.

"They are not fools. I am not so sure--" Eichmil had said; and when

the last force-ball, his last means of intergalactic communication,

went dead, the First of Boskone became very unsure indeed. The Patrol

undoubtedly had something new--he himself had had glimpses of it--but

what was it?

That Jalte's base was gone was obvious. That Boskone's hold upon the

Tellurian Galaxy was gone, followed as a corollary. That the Patrol was

or would soon be wiping out Boskone's regional and planetary units was

a logical inference. Star A Star, that accursed director of Lensmen,

had--must have--succeeded in stealing Jalte's records, to be willing to

destroy out of hand the base which had housed them.

Nor could Boskone do anything to help the underlings, now that the

long-awaited attack upon Jarnevon itself was almost certainly coming.

Let them come--Boskone was ready. Or was it--quite? Jalte's defenses

had been strong, but they had not withstood that unknown weapon even

for seconds.

Eichmil called a joint meeting of Boskone and the Academy of Science.

Coldly and precisely he told them everything that he had seen.

Discussion followed.

"Negative matter beyond a doubt," a scientist summed up the consensus

of opinion. "It has long been surmised that in some other, perhaps

hyperspatial universe there must exist negative matter of mass

sufficient to balance the positive material of the universe we know.

It is conceivable that by hyperspatial explorations and manipulations

the Tellurians have discovered that other universe and have transported

some of its substance into ours."

"Can they manufacture it?" Eichmil demanded.

"The probability that such material can be manufactured is exceedingly

small," was the studied reply. "An entirely new mathematics would be

necessary. In all probability they found it already existent."

"We must find it also, then, and at once."

"We will try. Bear in mind, however, that the field is large, and do

not be optimistic of an early success. Note, also, that the substance

is not necessary--perhaps not even desirable--in a defensive action."

"Why not?"

"Because, by directing pressors against such a bomb, Jalte actually

pulled it into his base, precisely where the enemy wished it to go.

As a surprise attack, against those ignorant of its true nature, such

a weapon would be effective indeed; but against us it will prove a

boomerang. All that is needful is to mount tractor heads upon pressor

bases, and thus drive the bombs back upon those who send them." It did

not occur, even to the coldest scientist of them all, that that bomb

had been of planetary mass. Not one of the Eich suspected that all that

remained of the entire world upon which Jalte's base had stood was a

handful of meteorites.

"Let them come, then," the First of Boskone announced grimly. "Their

dependence upon a new and supposedly unknown weapon explains what would

otherwise be insane tactics. With that weapon impotent, they cannot

possibly win a long war waged so far from their bases. We can match

them ship for ship, and more; and our supplies and munitions are close

at hand. We will wear them down--blast them out--the Tellurian Galaxy

shall yet be ours!"

* * * * *

Admiral Haynes spent almost every waking hour setting up and knocking

down tactical problems in the practice tank, and gradually his

expression changed from one of strained anxiety to one of pleased

satisfaction. He went over to his sealed-band transmitter, called all

communications officers, and ordered:

"Each vessel will direct its longest-range detector, at highest

possible power, centrally upon the objective galaxy. The first observer

to find enemy activity will report it instantly to us here. We will

send out a general C. B., at which every vessel will cease blasting

at once, remaining motionless until further orders." He then called

Kinnison.

"Look here," he directed the attention of the younger man into the

reducer, which now represented intergalactic space, with a portion

of the Second Galaxy filling one edge. "I have a solution, but its

practicability depends upon whether or not it calls for the impossible

from you, Worsel, and your Rigellians. You remarked at the start that I

knew my tactics. I wish that I knew more--or at least could be certain

that Boskone and I agree upon what constitutes good tactics. I feel

quite safe in assuming, however, that we shall meet their Grand Fleet

well outside the Galaxy--"

"Why?" asked the startled Kinnison. "If I were Eichmil, I'd pull every

ship I had in around Jarnevon and keep it there; they can't force

engagement with us!"

"Poor tactics. The very presence of their fleet out in space will

force us to engage, and decisively at that. From his viewpoint, if he

defeats us there, that ends it. If he loses, that is only his first

line of defense. His observers will have reported fully. He will have

invaluable data upon which to work, and much time before even his

outlying fortresses can be threatened.

"From our viewpoint, we cannot refuse battle if his fleet is there. It

would be suicidal for us to enter that Galaxy, leaving intact outside

it a fleet as powerful as that one is bound to be."

"Why? Harrying us from the rear might be bothersome, but I don't see

how it could be disastrous."

"Not that. They could, and would, attack Tellus."

"Oh--I never thought of that. But couldn't they, anyway--two fleets?"

"No. He knows that Tellus is very strongly held, and that this is no

ordinary fleet. He will have to concentrate everything he has upon

either one or the other--it is almost inconceivable that he would

divide his forces."

"QX. I said that you're the brains of the outfit, and you are!"

"Thanks, lad. At the first sign of detection, we stop. They may be

able to detect us, but I doubt it, since we are looking for them with

special instruments. But that's immaterial. What I want to know is, can

you and your crew split the fleet, making two big, hollow hemispheres

of it? Let this group of ambers represent the enemy. Since they know

that we will have to carry the battle to them, they will probably be

in fairly close formation. Set your two hemispheres--the reds--there

and there. Close in, making a sphere, like this--englobing their whole

fleet. Can you do it?"

Kinnison whistled through his teeth; a long, low, unmelodious whistle.

"Yes--but Klono's brazen claws, chief, suppose they catch you at it?"

"How can they? If you were using detectors, instead of double-ended,

tight-beam binders, how many of our own vessels could you locate?"

"That's right, too--less than one percent of them. They couldn't tell

that they were being englobed until long after it was done. They

could, however, globe up inside us--"

"Yes--and that would give them the tactical advantage of position,"

the admiral admitted. "We probably have, however, enough superiority

in firing power, if not in actual tonnage, to make up the difference.

Also, we have speed enough, I think, so that we could retire in good

order. But you are assuming that they can maneuver as rapidly and as

surely as we can, a condition which I do not consider at all probable.

If, as I believe much more likely, they have no better Grand Fleet

Operations than we had in Helmuth's star cluster--if they haven't the

equivalent of you and Worsel and this supertank here--then what?"

"In that case it'd be just too bad. Just like pushing baby chicks into

a pond." Kinnison saw the possibilities clearly enough after they had

been explained to him.

"How long will it take you?"

"With Worsel and both full crews of Rigellians I would guess it at

about ten hours--eight to compute and assign positions and two to get

there."

"Fast enough--faster than I would have thought possible. Oil up your

calculating machines and Simplexes and get ready."

* * * * *

In due time the enemy fleet was detected and detection was confirmed.

The "Cease Blasting" signal was sent out. Civilization's prodigious

fleet stopped dead, hanging motionless in space with its nearest

units at the tantalizing limit of detectability from the warships

awaiting them. For eight hours two hundred Rigellians stood at whirring

calculators, each solving course-and-distance problems at the rate of

ten per minute. Two hours or less of free flight, and Haynes rejoiced

audibly in the perfection of the two red hemispheres shown in his

reducer. The two immense bowls flashed together, rim to rim. The

sphere began inexorably to contract. Each ship put out a red K6T screen

as a combined battle flag and identification, and the greatest naval

engagement of the age was on.

It soon became evident that the Boskonians could not maneuver their

forces efficiently. Their fleet was too huge, too unwieldy for their

operations officers to handle. Against an equally uncontrollable mob of

battle craft it would have made a showing, but against the carefully

planned, chronometer-timed attack of the Patrol individual action,

however courageous or however desperate, was useless.

Each red-sheathed destroyer hurtled along a definite course at a

definite force of drive for a definite length of time. Orders were

strict; no ship was to be lured from course, pace, or time. They could,

however, fight en passant with their every weapon if occasion arose;

and occasion did arise, some thousands of times. The units of Grand

Fleet flashed inward, lashing out with their terrible primaries at

everything in space not wearing the crimson robe of civilization. And

whatever those beams struck did not need striking again.

The warships of Boskone fought back. Many of the Patrol's defensive

screens blazed hot enough almost to mask the scarlet beacons; some

of them went down. A few Patrol ships were englobed by the concerted

action of two or three subfleet commanders more co-operative or more

farsighted than the rest, and were blasted out of existence by an

overwhelming concentration of power. But even those vessels took toll

with their primaries as they went out; few, indeed, were the Boskonians

who escaped through holes thus made.

At a predetermined instant each dreadnought stopped, to find herself

one nut of an immense, red-flaming hollow sphere of ships packed almost

screen to screen. And upon signal every primary projector that could

be brought to bear hurled bolt after bolt, as fast as the burned-out

shells could be replaced, into the ragingly incandescent inferno which

that sphere's interior instantly became. For two hundred million

discharges such as those will convert even a very large volume of space

into something utterly impossible to describe.

The raving torrents of energy subsided and keen-eyed observers swept

the scene of action. Nothing was there except jumbled and tumbling

white-hot wreckage. A few vessels had escaped during the closing in of

the sphere, but none inside it had survived this climactic action--not

one in five thousand of Boskone's massed fleet made its way back to

dark Jarnevon.

"Maneuver fifty-eight--hipe!" and Grand Fleet shot away. There was no

waiting, no hesitation. Every course and time had been calculated and

assigned.

Into the Second Galaxy the scarcely diminished armada of the Patrol

hurtled--to Jarnevon's solar system--around it. Once again the crimson

sheathing of civilization's messengers almost disappeared in blinding

coruscance as the outlying fortresses unleashed their mighty weapons;

once again a few ships, subjected to such concentrations of force as to

overload their equipment, were lost; but this conflict, although savage

in its intensity, was brief. Nothing mobile _could_ endure for long

the utterly hellish energies of the primaries, and soon the armored

planetoids, too, ceased to be.

[Illustration: _Some ships, attacked on every hand, watched meters

climb, strain against stopping--and saw huge converters, hopelessly

overloaded, vanish in gouts of atomic flame._]

"Maneuver fifty-nine--hipe!" and Grand Fleet closed in upon somber

Jarnevon itself.

"Sixty!" It rolled in space, forming an immense cylinder; the doomed

planet the midpoint of its axis.

"Sixty-one!" Tractors and pressors leaped out, from ship to ship

and from ship to shore. The Patrol did not know whether or not the

scientists of the Eich could render their planet inertialess, but now

it made no difference. Planet and fleet were for the time being one

rigid system.

"Sixty-two--blast!" And against the world-girdling battlements of

Jarnevon there flamed out in all their appalling might the dreadful

beams against which the defensive webs of battleships and of mobile

citadels alike had been so pitifully inadequate.

But these which they were attacking now were not the limited

installations of a mobile structure. The Eich had at their command

all the resources of a galaxy. Their generators and conductors could

be of any desired number and size. Hence Eichmil, in view of prior

happenings, had strengthened the defenses of his planet to a point

which certain of his fellows derided as being beyond the bounds of

sanity or reason.

* * * * *

Now those unthinkably powerful screens were being tested to the utmost.

Bolt after bolt of quasi-solid lightning struck against them, spitting

mile-long sparks in baffled fury as they raged to ground. Plain and

incased in Q-type helices they came; biting, tearing, gouging. Often

and often, under the thrust of half a dozen at once, local failures

appeared; but these were only momentary, and not even the newly devised

shells of the projectors could stand the load long enough to penetrate

effectively Boskone's indescribably capable defenses. Nor were the

enemies' offensive weapons less capable.

Rods, cones, planes, and shears of pure force bored, cut, stabbed, and

slashed. Bombs and dirigible torpedoes charged to the skin with duodec

sought out the red-cloaked ships. Beams, sheathed against atmosphere

in Q-type helices, crashed against and through their armor--beams of

an intensity almost to rival that of the Patrol's primary weapons and

of a hundred times their effective aperture. And not singly did those

beams come. Eight, ten, twelve at once they clung to and demolished

dreadnought after dreadnought of the Expeditionary Force.

Eichmil was well content. "We can hold them and we are burning them

down!" he gloated. "Let them loose their negative-matter bombs! Get the

analysis of those beams--build them! They are burning out projectors,

which means that they cannot keep this up indefinitely. They will have

to retire, what there are left of them, for more munitions; and when

they come back we will blast them out of space!"

He was wrong. Grand Fleet did not stay there long enough so that even

the projectors of the Eich could destroy more than a few thousands of

ships. For even while the cylinder was forming, Kinnison was in rapid

but careful consultation with Thorndyke, checking intrinsic velocities,

directions, and speeds.

"QX, Verne--_cut_!" he yelled.

Two planets, one well within each end of the combat cylinder, went

inert at the word; resuming instantaneously their diametrically opposed

intrinsic velocities, each of some thirty miles per second. And it was

these two very ordinary, but utterly irresistible planets, instead of

the negative-matter bombs with which the Eich were prepared to cope,

which hurtled then along the axis of the immense tube of warships

toward Jarnevon. Whether or not the Eich could make their planet

inertialess has never been found out. Free or inert, the end would have

been the same.

"Every Y14M officer of every ship of the Patrol, attention!" Haynes

ordered. "Don't get all tensed up. Take it easy; there's lots of time.

Any time within a second after I give the word will be p-l-e-n-t-y o-f

t-i-m-e--_cut_!"

The two worlds rushed together, doomed Jarnevon squarely between them.

Haynes snapped out his order as the three were within two seconds of

contact, and as he spoke all the tractors and all the pressors were

released. The ships of the Patrol were already free--none had been

inert since leaving Jalte's ex-planet--and thus could not be harmed by

flying débris.

The planets touched. They coalesced, squishingly at first, the

encircling warships drifting lightly away before a cosmically violent

blast of superheated atmosphere; Jarnevon burst open, all the way

around, and spattered; billions upon billions of tons of hot core-magma

being hurled afar in gouts and streamers. The two planets, crashing

through what had been a world, met, crunched, crushed together in

all the unimaginable momentum of their masses and velocities. They

subsided, crashingly. Not merely mountains, but entire halves of worlds

disrupted and fell, in such Gargantuan paroxysms as the eye of man had

never elsewhere beheld. And every motion generated heat. The kinetic

energy of translation of two worlds became heat. Heat added to heat,

piling up ragingly, frantically, unable to escape!

The masses, still falling upon and through and past themselves and each

other, melted--boiled--vaporized incandescently. The entire mass, the

mass of three fused worlds, began to equilibrate; growing hotter and

hotter as more and more of its terrific motion was converted into pure

heat. Hotter! _Hotter!_ HOTTER!

And as the Grand Fleet of the Galactic Patrol blasted through

intergalactic space toward the First Galaxy and home, there glowed

behind it a new, small, comparatively cool, and probably short-lived

companion to an old and long-established star.