void, the vast conical fleet with
its slowly circling belt of little ships. A fleet whose counterpart had
never entered the Solar System.

It was well beyond the orbit of Pluto that the first of the Solarian
scouts detected the approaching invasion fleet. The tension that had
gripped Earth and Venus and their guardian ships for so long a time
suddenly snapped; and like a great machine set into sudden motion, or a
huge boulder, balanced, given the last push that sends it spinning with
destructive violence down a slope, the fleet went into action.

It was merely a little scout, a ten-man cruiser, that sent in the
message of attack, and then, upon receiving headquarters' permission,
went into action. Some of the tacticians had wanted to try to get the
entire fleet into battle range for a surprise attack in power; but
others felt that this could not possibly succeed. Most important, they
decided, was the opportunity of learning if the invaders had any new
weapons.

The Nigrans had no warning, for a ten-man cruiser was invisible to them,
though the vast bulk of their own ships stood out plainly, lighted by a
blazing sun. No need here to make the sun stand still while the battle
was finished! There was no change out here in all time! The first
intimation of attack that the Nigrans had was the sudden splitting and
destruction of the leading ship. Then, before they could realize what
was happening, thirty-five other destructive molecular motion beams were
tearing through space to meet them! The little ten-man cruiser and its
flight of speedsters was in action! Twenty-one great ships crumpled and
burst noiselessly in the void, their gases belching out into space in a
great shining halo of light as the sun's light struck it.

Unable to see their tiny enemies, who now were striking as swiftly, as
desperately as possible, knowing that death was practically certain,
hoping only to destroy a more equal number of the giants, they played
their beams of death about them, taking care to miss their own ships as
much as possible.

Another ship silently crumpled, and suddenly one cruiser right in the
line of the flight was brought to a sudden halt as all its molecules
were reversed. The ships behind it, unable to stop so suddenly, piled
up on it in chaotic wreckage! A vast halo of shining gas spread out
fifty thousand miles about, blinding further the other ships, the
radiance about them making it impossible to see their tiny enemies.