thoroughly well equipped to argue with any force mobile enough to bar its way.
While it has been said that there was nothing of stealth in this approach, to the
Second Galaxy, it must not be thought that it was unduly blatant or obvious: any
carelessness or ostentation would have been very poor tactics indeed. Civilization’s
Grand Fleet advanced in strict formation, with every routine military precaution. Its
nullifiers were full on, every blocking screen was out, every plate upon every. ship was
hot and was being scanned by alert and keen-eyed observers.
But every staff officer from Port Admiral Haynes down, and practically every line
officer as well, knew that the enemy would locate the invading fleet long before it
reached even the outer fringes of the galaxy toward which it was speeding. That
stupendous tonnage of ferrous metal could not be disguised; nor could it by any
possible artifice be made to simulate any normal tenant of the space which it occupied.
The gigantic flares of the heavy stuff could not be baffled, and the combined
grand flare of Grand Fleet made a celestial object which would certainly attract the
electronic telescopes of plenty of observatories. And the nearest such “scopes,
instruments of incredible powers of resolution, would be able to pick them out, almost
ship by ship, against the relatively brilliant background of their own flares.
The Patrolman, however, did not care. This was, and was intended to be, an
open, straightforward invasion; the first wave of an attack which would not cease until
the Galactic Patrol had crushed Boskonia throughout the entire Second Galaxy.
Grand Fleet bored serenely on. Superbly confident in her awful might, grandly
contemptuous of whatever she was to face, she stormed along; uncaring that at that
very moment the foe was massing his every defensive arm to hurl her back or to blast
her out of existence.
CHAPTER 15
Klovia
As Haynes and the Galactic Council had already surmised, Boskonia was now
entirely upon the defensive. She had made her supreme bid in the effort which had
failed so barely to overcome the defenses of hard-held Tellus. It was, as has been seen,
a very near thing indeed, but the zwilnik chieftains did not and could not know that.
Communication through the hyper-spatial tube was impossible, no ordinary
communicator beam could be driven through the Patrol’s scramblers, no Boskonian
observers could be stationed near enough to the scene of action to perceive or to
record anything that had occurred, and no single zwilnik ship or entity survived to tell of
how nearly Tellus had come to extinction.
And, in fine, it would have made no difference in the mind of Alcon of Thrale if he
had known. A thing which was not a full success was a complete failure; to be almost a
success meant nothing. The invasion of Tellus had failed. They had put everything they
had into that gigantically climactic enterprise. They had shot the whole wad, and it had
not been enough. They had, therefore, abandoned for the nonce humanity’s galaxy
entirely, to concentrate their every effort upon the rehabilitation of their own depleted
forces and upon the design and construction of devices of hitherto unattempted
capability and power.
But they simply had not had enough time to prepare properly to meet the
invading Grand Fleet of Civilization. It takes time—lots of time—to build such heavy stuff
as maulers and flying fortresses, and they had not been allowed to have it. They had
plenty of lighter stuff, since the millions of Boskonian planets could furnish upon a few
hours’ notice more cruisers, and even more first-line battleships, than could possibly be
used efficiently, but their back-bone of brute force and fire-power was woefully weak.
Since the destruction of a solid center of maulers was.
theoretically, improbable to the point of virtual impossibility, neither Boskonia nor
the Galactic Patrol had built up any large reserve of such structures. Both would now
build up such a reserve as rapidly as possible, of course, but half-built structures could
not fight.
The zwilniks had many dirigible planets, but they were too big. Planets, as has
been seen, are too cumbersome and unwieldly for use against a highly mobile and
adequately-controlled fleet.
Conversely, humanity’s Grand Fleet was up to its maximum strength and
perfectly balanced. It had suffered losses in the defense of Prime Base, it is true; but
those losses were of comparatively light craft, which Civilization’s inhabited world could
replace as quickly as could Boskonia’s.
Hence Boskonia’s fleet was at a very serious disadvantage as it formed to defy
humanity just outside the rim of its galaxy. At two disadvantages, really, for Boskonia
then had neither Lensmen nor a Z9M9Z; and Haynes, canny old master strategist that
he was, worked upon them both.
Grand Fleet so far had held to one right-line course, and upon this line the zwilnik
defense had been built. Now Haynes swung aside, forcing the enemy to re-form: they
had to engage him, he did not have to engage them. Then, as they shifted—raggedly,
as he had supposed and had hoped that they would—he swung again. Again, and
again; the formation of the enemy becoming more and more hopelessly confused with
each shift.
The scouts had been reporting constantly; in the seven-hundred-foot lenticular
tank of the Z9M9Z there was spread in exact detail the disposition of every unit of the
foe. Four Rigellian Lensmen, now thoroughly trained and able to perform the task
almost as routine, condensed the picture— summarized it—in Haynes’ ten-foot tactical
tank. And finally, so close that another swerve could not be made, and with the line of
flight of his solid fighting core pointing straight through the loosely disorganized nucleus
of the enemy, Haynes gave the word to engage.
The scouts, remaining free, flashed aside into their prearranged observing
positions. Everything else went inert and bored ahead. The light cruisers and the
cruising bombers clashed first, and a chill struck at Haynes’ stout old heart as he
learned that the enemy did have negative-matter bombs.
Upon that point there had been much discussion. One view was that the
Boskonians would have them, since they had seen them in action and since their
scientists were fully as capable as were those of Civilization. The other was that, since it
had taken all the massed intellect of the Conference of Scientists to work out a method
of handling and of propelling such bombs, and since the Boskonians were probably not
as cooperative as were the civilized races, they could not have them.
Approximately half of the light cruisers of Grand Fleet were bombers. This was
deliberate, for in the use of the new arm there were involved problems which theoretical
strategy could not completely solve. Theoretically, a bomber could defeat a
conventional light cruiser of equal tonnage one hundred percent of the time,
provided—here was the rub!—that the conventional cruiser did not blast her out of the
ether before she could get her bombs into the vitals of the foe. For, in order to
accommodate the new equipment, something of the old had to be decreased:
something of power, of armament, of primary or secondary beams, or of defensive
screen. Otherwise the size and mass must be so increased that the ship would no
longer be a light cruiser, but a heavy one.
And the Patrol’s psychologists had had ideas, based upon facts which they had
gathered from Kinnison and from Illona and from many spools of tape—ideas by virtue
of which it was eminently possible that the conventional light cruisers of Civilization, with
their heavier screen and more and hotter beams, could vanquish the light cruisers of the
foe, even though they should turn out to be negative-matter bombers.
Hence the fifty-fifty division of types; but, since Haynes was not thoroughly sold
upon either the psychologists or their ideas, the commanders of his standard light
cruisers had received very explicit and definite orders. If the Boskonians should have
bombs and if the high-brows’ idea did not pan out, they were to turn tail and run, at
maximum and without stopping to ask questions or to get additional instructions.
Haynes had not really believed that the enemy would have negabombs, they
were so new and so atrociously difficult to handle. He wanted—but was unable—to
believe implicitly in the psychologist’s findings. Therefore, as soon as he saw what was
happening, he abandoned his tank for a moment to seize a plate and get into full touch
with the control room of one of the conventional light cruisers then going into action.
He watched it drive boldly toward a Boskonian vessel which was in the act of
throwing bombs. He saw that the agile little vessel’s tractor zone was out. He watched
the bombs strike that zone and bounce. He watched the tractor-men go to work and he
saw the psychologists’ idea bear splendid fruit. For what followed was a triumph, not of
brute force and striking power, but of morale and manhood. The brain-men bad said,