hey'll check up on
that ship with the expedition, by radio and what-not, and when they find
out that it's clear out here--chop! Didn't get to see much, did you?"

"No, they must have switched over to their accumulators almost
instantly."

"Yeah, but if they've got accumulator capacity enough to hold off our
entire cosmic intake and get back to Jupiter besides, I'm a polyp! We're
going to take that ship, fellows, and learn a lot of stuff we never
dreamed of before. Ha! There goes his beam--pay me the four, Quince."

The dazzling wall of incandescence had blinked out without warning, and
Brandon's beam bored on through space, unimpeded. He shut it off and
turned to his fellows with a grin--a grin which disappeared instantly
as a thought struck him and he leaped back to his board.

"Sound the high-acceleration warning quick, Perce!" he snapped, and
drove in switch after switch.

"Cosmic intake's gone down to zero!" exclaimed MacDonald, as the
_Sirius_ leaped away.

"Had to cut it--they might shoot a jolt through that band. Just thought
of something. Maybe unnecessary, but no harm done if ... it's necessary,
all x--we're taking a sweet kissing right now. You see, even though
we're at pretty long range, they've got some horrible projectors, and
they were evidently mad enough to waste some power taking a good, solid
flash at us--and if we hadn't been expecting it, that flash would have
been a bountiful sufficiency, believe me--Great Cat! Look at that
meter--and I've had to throw in number ten shunt! The outer screen is
drawing five hundred and forty thousand!"

* * * * *

They stared at the meter in amazement. It was incredible, even after
they had seen those heptagons in action, that at such extreme range
any offensive beam could be driven with such unthinkable power--power
requiring for its neutralization almost the full output of the
prodigious batteries of accumulators carried by the _Sirius_! Yet for
five, ten, fifteen, twenty minutes that beam drove furiously against
their straining screens, and even Brandon's face grew tense and hard
as that frightful attack continued. At the end of twenty-two minutes,
however, the pointer of the meter snapped back to the pin and every
man there breathed an explosive sigh of relief--the almost unbearable
bombardment was over; the screen was drawing only its maintenance load.

"Wow!" Brandon shouted. "I thought for a minute they were going to han