on their plates. The enemy had put
down reenforcing rods of tremendous power. Three compression members
spread out fanwise behind her, bracing her against a low mountainside,
while one huge tractor beam was thrust directly downward, holding in an
unbreakable grip a cylinder of earth extending deep down into bedrock.

"Two can play at that game!" and Rodebush drove down similar beams, and
forward-reaching tractors as well. "Strap yourselves in solid,
everybody!" he sounded in general warning. "Something is going to give
way somewhere soon, and when it does we'll get a jolt!"

And the promised jolt did indeed come soon. Prodigiously massive and
powerful as the Nevian was, the _Boise_ was even more massive and more
powerful; and as the already enormous energy feeding the tractors,
pushers, and projectors was raised to its inconceivable maximum, the
vessel of the enemy was hurled upward, backward; and that of Earth shot
ahead with a bounding leap that threatened to strain even her mighty
members. The Nevian anchor rods had not broken; they had simply pulled
up the vast cylinders of solid rock that had formed their anchorages.

"Grab him now!" Rodebush yelled, and even while an avalanche of falling
rock was burying the countryside Cleveland snapped a tractor ray upon
the flying fish and pulled tentatively.

Nor did the Nevian now seem averse to coming to grips. The two warring
super-dreadnoughts darted toward each other, and from the invader there
flooded out the dread crimson opacity which had theretofore meant the
doom of all things Solarian. Flooded out and engulfed the immense globe
of humanity's hope in its spreading cloud of redly impenetrable murk.
But not for long. Triplanetary's super-ship boasted no ordinary
Terrestrial defense, but was sheathed in screen after screen of
ultra-vibrations: imponderable walls, it is true, but barriers
impenetrable to any unfriendly wave. To the outer screen the red veil of
the Nevians clung tenaciously, licking greedily at every square inch of
the shielding sphere of force, but unable to find an opening through
which to feed upon the steel of the _Boise's_ armor.

"Get back--'way back! Go back and help Pittsburgh!" Rodebush drove an
ultra communicator beam through the murk to the instruments of the
Terrestrial admiral; for the surviving warships of the fleet--its most
powerful units--were hurling themselves forward, to plunge into that red
destruction. "None of you will last a se