deafened by the sudden shriek of a
tremendous signal from outside!
Instantly Kendall knew what that meant. And he could not communicate with his men! There was no metal in these special suits, even the oxygen tanks were made of synthetic plastics of tremendous strength. No scrap of vibrating metal was permissible. The padded gloves and boots protected him — but there was a new and different type of crackle and haze from the metal points now. It was almost invisible in the practically airless ship, but Kendall saw it.
Presently he felt it, as he desperately increased his acceleration. Slow creeping heat was attacking him. The heat was increasing rapidly now. Desperately he was working at the crumbler-protection controls — but immediately set them back as they were. He had to have the crumbier protection as well — !
GRIMLY the great Miran ship
hung right beside them. Angrily
the two four-foot UV beams flashed
back — seeking some weak spot. There
were none. At her absolute maximum
of acceleration the little ship plunged
on. Gamma and atomic bombs were
washing her in flame. The heavy
blocks of paraffine between her walls
were long since melted, retained only
by the presence of the metal walls.
Smoke was beginning to filter out
now, and Kendall recognized a new,
and deadlier menace! Heat — quantities of heat were being poured into
the little ship, and the neutron guns
were doing their best to add to it. The
paraffine was confined in there — and
like any substance, it could be volitalized, and as a vapor, develop pressure — explosive pressure!
The Miran seemed satisfied in his tactics so far — and changed them. Forty-seven million miles from earth, the Miran simply accelerated a bit more, and crowded the Solarite ship a bit. White faced, Buck Kendall was forced to turn a bit aside. The Miran turned also. Kendall turned a bit more —
Flashing across his range of vision at an incredible speed, a tiny thing, no more than twenty feet long and five in diameter, a scout-ship appeared. Its tiny nose ultra violet beam was blasting a solid cylinder of violet incandescence a foot across in the hull of the Miran — and, to the Miran, angling swiftly across his range of vision. Its magnetic field clashed for a thousandth of a second with the T-253, instantly meeting, and absorbing the fringing edges. Then — it swept through the Miran's magnetic shield as easily. The delicate instruments of the scout instantaneously adjusted its own magnetic field as much as possible. There was resistance, enormous resistance — the ship crumpled in on itself, the tail vanished in dust as a sweeping crumbler beam caught it at last — and the remaining portion of the ship plowed into the nose of the Miran.
The Miran's force-control-room was wrecked. For perhaps a minute and a half, the ship was without control, then the control was re-established — and in vain the telescopes and instruments searched for the T-253. Lightless, her rockets out now, her fields damped down to extinction, the T-253 was lost in the pulsing, gyrating fields of half a dozen scout-ships.
Kendall looked grimly at the crushed spot on the nose of the Miran. His ship was drifting slowly away from the greater ship. Presently, however, the Miran put on speed in the direction of earth, and the T-253 fell far behind. The Miran was not