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ultra-band, mind you - and I ve heard nothing from him since. Therefore I want you to stay out of the
battle entirely. Stay as far away  from it as you can and still get good pictures of everything that happens.
I will see that orders are issued to the Chicago to that effect.
 But listen . . .
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 Those are orders! snapped Samms.  It is of the utmost importance that we know every detail of what
is going to happen. The answer is pictures. The only possibility of obtaining pictures is that machine you
have just developed. If the fleet wins, nothing will be lost. If the fleet loses - and I am not half as confident
of success as the Admiral is - the Chicago doesn t carry enough power to decide the issue, and we will
have the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we have probably lost Conway Costigan
today, and we don t want to lose you, too.
Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but the grizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth
Jovian War that he was, was not convinced.
 We ll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms! he declared.
 You just think you will, Captain. I have suggested, as forcibly as possible, that the general attack be
withheld until after a thorough investigation is made, but the Admiralty will not listen. They see the
advisability of withdrawing a camera ship, but that is as far as they will go.
 And that s plenty far enough! growled the Chicago s commander, as the beam snapped off.  Mr.
Cleveland, I don t like the idea of running away under fire, and I won t do it without direct orders from
the Admiral.
 Of course you won t - that s why you are going . . .
He was interrupted by a voice from the Headquarters speaker. The captain stepped up to the plate and,
upon being recognized, he received the exact orders which had been requested by the Chief of the
Triplanetary Service.
Thus it was that the Chicago reversed her acceleration, cut off her red screen, and fell rapidly behind,
while the vessels following her shot away toward another crimson-flaring loader. Farther and farther back
she dropped, back to the limiting range of the mechanism upon which Cleveland and his highly-trained
assistants were hard at work. And during all this time the forces of the seven sectors had been
concentrating.
The pilot vessels, with their flaming red screens, each followed by a cone of space- ships, drew closer
and closer together, approaching the Fearless - the British super- dreadnought which was to be the
flagship of the Fleet - the mightiest and heaviest space-ship which had yet lifted her stupendous mass into
the ether.
Now, systematically and precisely, the great Cone of Battle was coming into being; a formation
developed during the Jovian Wars while the forces of the Three Planets were fighting in space for their
very civilizations existence, and one never used since the last space-fleets of Jupiter s murderous hordes
had been wiped out.
The mouth of that enormous hollow cone was a ring of scout patrols, the smallest and most agile vessels
of the fleet. Behind them came a somewhat smaller ring of light cruisers, then rings of heavy cruisers and
of light battleships, and finally of heavy battleships. At the apex of the cone, protected by all the other
vessels of the formation and in best position to direct the battle, was the flagship. In this formation every
vessel was free to use her every weapon, with a minimum of danger to her sister ships; and yet, when the
gigantic main projectors were operated along the axis of the formation, from the entire vast circle of the
cone s mouth there flamed a cylindrical field of force of such intolerable intensity that in it no conceivable
substance could endure for a moment!
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The artificial planet of metal was now close enough so that it was visible to the ultra-vision of the Service
men, so plainly visible that the cigar-shaped warships of the pirates were seen issuing from the enormous
air-locks. As each vessel shot out into space it sped straight for the approaching fleet without waiting to
go into any formation - gray Roger believed his structures invisible to Triplanetary eyes, thought that the [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]