t of my plan to appear to carry out the attack as
originally planned.

About fifteen miles from their camps our ships came to a halt and
maintained their positions for a while with the idling blasts of their
rocket motors, to give the ultroscope operators a chance to make a
thorough examination of the territory below us, for it was very
important that this next step in our program should be carried out with
all secrecy.

At length they reported the ground below us entirely clear of any
appearance of human occupation, and a gun unit of long-range specialists
was lowered with a dozen rocket guns, equipped with special automatic
devices that the Resources Division had developed at my request, a few
hours before our departure. These were aiming and timing devices. After
calculating the range, elevation and rocket charges carefully, the guns
were left, concealed in a ravine, and the men were hauled up into the
ship again. At the predetermined hour, those unmanned rocket guns would
begin automatically to bombard the Bad Bloods' hillsides, shifting their
aim and elevation slightly with each shot, as did many of our artillery
pieces in the First World War.

In the meantime, we turned south about twenty miles, and grounded,
waiting for the bombardment to begin before we attempted to sneak across
the Han ship lane. I was relying for security on the distraction that
the bombardment might furnish the Han observers.

It was tense work waiting, but the affair went through as planned, our
squadron drifting across the route high enough to enable the ships'
tails of troops and supply cases to clear the ground.

In crossing the second ship route, out along the Beaches of Jersey, we
were not so successful in escaping observation. A Han ship came speeding
along at a very low elevation. We caught it on our electronic location
and direction finders, and also located it with our ultroscopes, but it
came so fast and so low that I thought it best to remain where we had
grounded the second time, and lie quiet, rather than get under way and
cross in front of it.

The point was this. While the Hans had no such devices as our
ultroscopes, with which we could see in the dark (within certain
limitations of course), and their electronic instruments would be
virtually useless in uncovering our presence, since all but natural
electronic activities were carefully eliminated from our apparatus,
except electrophone receivers (which are not easily sp