isn't designed to
let me be in more than two places at once. Wish it were--maybe after
this fracas is over we'll be able to incorporate something like that
into it."

The chief operator touched a lever and the chair upon which he sat, with
all its control panels, slid rapidly across the floor toward an
apparently blank wall. As he reached it, a port opened a metal scroll
appeared, containing the numbers and last reported positions of all
Fenachrone vessels outside the detector zone, and a vast magazine of
torpedoes came up through the floor, with an automatic loader to place a
torpedo under the operator's hand the instant its predecessor had been
launched.

"Get Peg here quick, Mart--we need a stenographer. Till she gets here,
see what you can do in getting those first numbers before they roll off
the end of the scroll. No, hold it--as you were! I've got controls
enough to put the whole thing on a recorder, so we can study it at our
leisure."

Haste was indeed necessary for the operator worked with uncanny
quickness of hand. One fleeting glance at the scroll, a lightning
adjustment of dials in the torpedo, a touch upon a tiny button, and a
messenger was upon its way. But quick as he was, Seaton's flying fingers
kept up with him, and before each torpedo disappeared through the ether
gate there was fastened upon it a fifth-order tracer ray that would
never leave it until the force had been disconnected at the gigantic
control board of the Norlaminian projector. One flying minute passed
during which seventy torpedoes had been launched, before Seaton spoke.

"Wonder how many ships they've got out, anyway? Didn't get any idea from
the brain-record. Anyway, Rovol, it might be a sound idea for you to
install me some more tracer rays on this board, I've got only a couple
of hundred, and that may not be enough--and I've got both hands full."

Rovol seated himself beside the younger man, like one organist joining
another at the console of a tremendous organ. Seaton's nimble fingers
would flash here and there, depressing keys and manipulating controls
until he had exactly the required combination of forces centered upon
the torpedo next to issue. He then would press a tiny switch and upon a
panel full of red-topped, numbered plungers; the one next in series
would drive home, transferring to itself the assembled beam and
releasing the keys for the assembly of other forces. Rovol's fingers
were also flying, but the forces he d