too--we have got pretty much the same idea in our cosmic
intake fields, but we didn't carry things half as far as they have done.
Huh! They're flashing us again ... but those thin little beams don't
mean anything. They're just trying to make us feed them some more, I
guess. But we've got to hold them back some way--wonder if they can
absorb a tractor field?"

The hexans had lashed out a few times with their lighter weapons,
but, finding the _Sirius_ unresponsive, had soon shut them off and were
stolidly plunging along toward Jupiter. Brandon flung out a tractor rod
and threw the mass of his cruiser upon it as it locked into those sullen
green walls. But as soon as the enemy felt its drag, their screens
flared white, and the massive Terrestrial space-ship quivered in every
member as that terrific cable of force was snapped.

"They apparently cannot store up the energy of a tractor," commented
Westfall, "but you will observe that they have no difficulty in
radiating when they care to."

"Those two ideas didn't pan out so heavy. There's lots of things not
tried yet, though. Our next best bet is to get around in front of him
and push back. If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a
pressor, they're really good."

The pilot maneuvered the _Sirius_ into line, directly between Jupiter
and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action,
Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the
center of mass of the Vorkulian fortress. For a moment it held solidly,
then, as the screens of the enemy went into action, it rebounded and
glanced off in sparkling, cascading torrents. But the hexans, with all
their twisting and turning, could not present to that prodigious beam of
force any angle sufficiently obtuse to rob it of half its power, and the
driving projectors of the pentagon again burst into activity as the
backward-pushing mass of the _Sirius_ made itself felt. In a short time,
however, the wall-screens were again cut off--apparently more power was
required to drive them than they were able to deflect.

Although even the enormous tonnage of the Terrestrial cruiser was
insignificant in comparison with the veritable mountain of metal to
which she was opposed, so that the fiercest thrust of her driving
projectors did not greatly affect the monster's progress; yet Brandon
and his cohorts were well content.

"It's a long trip back to where they came from, and since they wanted
to