gh they
were, each was highly effective.

A hard-eyed observer, face almost against his plate and both hands and
both feet manipulating controls, hurled the first torpedo. Propelling
rockets viciously aflame, it twisted and looped around the incandescent
rods of destruction so thickly and starkly outlined, under perfect
control; unaffected by the hideous distortion of all ether-borne
signals. Through a pirate screen it went, and under the terrific blast
of its detonation the entire midsection of the stricken battleship
vanished. It should have been out, cold--but to the amazement of the
observers, both ends kept on fighting with scarcely lessened power! Two
more of the frightful bombs had to be launched--each remaining section
had to be blown to bits--before those terrible beams went out! Not a man
in that great fleet had even an inkling of the truth; that those great
vessels, those awful engines of destruction, did not contain a single
living creature: that they were manned and fought by automatons; robots
controlled by keen-eyed, space-hardened veterans inside the pirates'
planetoid!

But they were to receive an inkling of it. As ship after ship of the
pirate fleet was destroyed, Roger realized that his navy was beaten, and
forthwith all his surviving vessels darted toward the apex of the cone,
where the heaviest battleships were stationed. There each hurled itself
upon a Triplanetary warship, crashing to its own destruction, but in
that destruction insuring the loss of one of the heaviest vessels of the
enemy. Thus passed the _Fearless_, and twenty of the finest space-ships
of the fleet as well. But the ranking officer assumed command, the
war-cone was re-formed, and, yawning maw to the fore, the great
formation shot toward the pirate stronghold, now near at hand. It again
launched its stupendous cylinder of annihilation, but even as the mighty
defensive screens of the planetoid flared into incandescently furious
defense, the battle was interrupted and pirates and Triplanetarians
learned alike that they were not alone in the ether.

Space became suffused with a redly impenetrable opacity, and through
that indescribable pall there came reaching huge arms of force
incredible; writhing, coruscating beams of power which glowed a baleful,
although almost imperceptible, red. A vessel of unheard-of armament and
power, hailing from the then unknown solar system of Nevia, had come to
rest in that space. For months her comm