good stead that from the records of those
ingenious instruments he and his scientists had been able to reconstruct
not only the generators of the attacking forces, but also the screens
employed by the amphibians in the neutralization of similar beams. With
a vastly inferior armament the smallest of Roger's vessels had defeated
the most powerful battleships of Triplanetary; what had he to fear in
such a heavy craft as the one he now was driving, one so superlatively
armed and powered? Well it was for his peace of mind that he had no
inkling that the harmless-looking sphere he was so blithely attacking
was in reality the much-discussed, half-mythical "super-ship" of
Triplanetary's Secret Service; nor that its already unprecedented
armament had been re-enforced, thanks to that hated Costigan, with
Roger's own every worth-while idea, as well as with every weapon and
defense known to that arch-Nevian, Nerado!

Unknowing and contemptuous, Roger launched his converter field, and
instantly found himself fighting for his very life. For from Rodebush at
the controls down, the men of the Secret Service countered with wave
after wave and with salvo after salvo of vibratory and material
destruction. No thought of mercy for the men of the pirate ship could
enter their minds. The outlaws had each been given a chance to
surrender, and each had refused it. Refusing, they knew, as the
Triplanetarians knew and as all modern readers know, meant that they
were staking their lives upon victory. For with modern armaments it is
seldom indeed that a single man lives through the defeat in battle of a
war-vessel of space.

Roger launched his field of red opacity, but it did not reach even
_Boise_'s screens. All space seemed to explode into violet splendor as
Rodebush neutralized it, drove it back with his obliterating zone of
force; but even that all-devouring zone could not touch Roger's
peculiarly efficient screen. The outlaw vessel stood out, unharmed.
Ultra-violet, infra-red, pure heat, infra-sound, solid beams of
high-tension high-frequency current in whose paths the most stubborn
metals would be volatilized instantly; all iron-driven, every deadly and
torturing vibration known was hurled against that screen; but it, too,
was iron-driven, and it held. Even the awful force of the macro-beam was
dissipated by it--reflected, hurled away on all sides in coruscating
torrents of blinding, dazzling energy. Cooper, Adlington, Spencer, and
Dutton