ppalling toll
in the thinning ranks of the Solarians. The coming of the Rocket Squad
was welcome indeed! They were able to maneuver as swiftly as the enemy;
the speedsters were harder to spot than the Solarian ten-man and
thirty-man boats. The Solarian speedsters were even smaller than the
comparable Nigran craft, and some of these did a tremendous amount of
damage. The heat ray was quite ineffective against the ten-man ships,
even when working at full capacity, when produced by the small
generators of the Nigran one-man boats. The cruisers could absorb the
heat and turn it into power faster than the enemy could supply it. Beams
from the monster interstellar liners were another matter, of course.

But the one-man speedsters had a truly deadly plan of attack against the
liners. The plan was officially frowned upon because of the great risks
the pilots must take. They directed their boats at one of the monster
ships, all the power units on at full drive. As close to target as
possible the man jumped from his ship, clothed, of course, in an
altitude suit equipped with a radio transmitter and receiver.

Death rays could not stop the speedsters, and with their momentum, the
invaders could not make it less deadly with their heat beam, for,
molten, it was still effective. A projectile weighing twenty-two tons,
moving a hundred miles a second, can destroy anything man can lift off a
planet! Their very speed made it impossible to dodge them, and usually
they found their mark. As for the risk, if the Solarian forces were
victorious, the pilots could be picked up later, provided too long a
time had not elapsed!

In the midst of the battle, the Solarians began to wonder why the Nigran
fleet was decreasing so rapidly--certainly they had not caused all that
damage! Then suddenly they found the answer. One of their ships--then
another--and another fell victim to a pale red ray that showed up like a
ghostly pillar of luminosity coming from nowhere and going nowhere! The
answer? The invaders' ships were becoming invisible! The invisibility
detectors were being overloaded now, and the hunt was hard, while the
Nigrans were slipping past them and silently destroying Solarian ships!
The molecular motion rays were quite effective on an invisible
ship--once it had been found. They were destroying the Nigrans as
rapidly as they were being destroyed, but they were letting some of them
slip past! The luminous paint bombs and bullets were now c