rry food and supplies. They
were not to enter the engagement, for their huge size would make them as
vulnerable to the tiny darting mites of space as the Nigran ships had
been to the Interplanetary Patrol. The little ships could not
conveniently stock for more than a week of engagement, then drop back to
these warehouses of space, and go forward again for action.

Throughout the long wait the officers of the Solarian forces organized
their forces to the limit of their ability, planning each move of their
attack. Space had been marked off into a great three-dimensional map,
and each ship carried a small replica, the planets moving as they did in
their orbits. The space between the planets was divided off into
definite points in a series of Cartesian co-ordinates, the sun being the
origin, and the plane of the elliptic being the X-Y plane.

The OX line was taken pointing toward one of the brightest of the fixed
stars that was in the plane of the elliptic. The entire solar system was
thus marked off as had been the planets long ages before, into a system
of three dimensional latitude and longitude. This was imperative, in
order to assure the easy location of the point of first attack, and to
permit the entire fleet to come into position there. A scattered guard
was to remain free, to avoid any false attacks and a later attack from a
point millions of miles distant. Earth and Venus were each equipped with
gigantic ray projectors, mighty weapons that could destroy anything,
even a body as large as the Moon, at a distance of ten thousand miles.
Still, a ship might get through, and with the death ray--what fearful
toll might be exacted from a vast city such as Chicago--with its thirty
millions! Or Karos, on Venus, with its fifteen and one half millions!

The tension became greater and greater as with each passing day the
populace of two worlds awaited the call from the far-flung guard. The
main bulk of the fleet had been concentrated in the center of their
great spherical shell of ships. They could only wait--and watch--and
prepare! Hundreds of miles apart, yet near enough so that no ship
except perhaps a one-man craft could pass them undetected; and behind
them were ships with delicate apparatus that could detect any foreign
body of any size whatever within a hundred thousand miles of them.

The Solar System was prepared to repel boarders from the vast sea of
space!

VI

Taj Lamor gazed down at the tremendous fi