the screens of deflection
surrounding the pirate vessels could not handle even a fraction of their
awful power. Invisibility lost, their defensive screens flared briefly;
but even the enormous force backing Roger's inventions, far greater than
that of any single Triplanetary vessel, could not hold off the
incredible violence of the massed attack of the hundreds of mighty
vessels composing the Fleet. Their defensive screens flared briefly,
then went down; their great hulls first glowing red, then shining white,
then in a brief moment exploding into flying masses of red hot, molten,
and gaseous metal.

A full two-thirds of Roger's force was caught in that raging,
incandescent beam; caught and obliterated: but the remainder did not
retreat to the planetoid. Darting out around the edge of the cone at a
stupendous acceleration, they attacked its flanks and the engagement
became general. But now, since enough beams were kept upon each ship of
the enemy so that invisibility could not be restored, each Triplanetary
war vessel could attack with full efficiency. Magnesium flares and
star-shells illuminated space for a thousand miles, and from every unit
of both fleets was being hurled every item of solid, explosive and
vibratory destruction known to the warfare of that age. Offensive beams,
rods and daggers of frightful power struck and were neutralized by
defensive screens equally capable; the long range and furious dodging
made ordinary solid, or even atomic-explosive projectiles useless; and
both sides were filling all space with such a volume of blanketing
frequencies that such radio-dirigible atomics as were launched could not
be controlled, but darted madly and erratically hither and thither,
finally to be exploded or volatilized harmlessly in mid-space by the
touch of some fiercely insistant, probing beam of force.

Individually, however, the pirate vessels were far more powerful than
those of the fleet, and that superiority soon began to make itself felt.
The power of the smaller ships began to fail as their accumulators
became discharged under the awful drain of the battle, and vessel after
vessel of the Triplanetary fleet was hurled into nothingness by the
concentrated blasts of the pirates' rays. But the Triplanetary forces
had one great advantage. In furious haste the Service men had been
altering the controls of the dirigible atomic torpedoes, so that they
would respond to ultra-wave control; and, few in number thou