slobbering, meaningless mumble. Martin stared into his plate in amazement. The Communications Officer of
Martin’s ship, the Washington, had slumped down loosely into his seat as though his every bone had turned to a
rubber string. His tongue lolled out limply between slacks jaws, his eyes protruded, his limbs jerked and twitched
aimlessly.
Every man visible in the plate was similarly affected- the entire Communications staff was in the same pitiable
condition of utter helplessness. But Ferdinand Stone did not stare. A haze of livid light had appeared, gnawing
viciously at his spherical protective screen, and he sprang instantly to his instruments.
“I can’t say that I expected this particular development” but I know what they are doing and I am not surprised,”
Stone said, coolly. “They have discovered the thought band and are broadcasting such an interference on it that no
human being not protected against it can think intelligently. There, I have expanded our zone to cover the whole
ship. I hope that they don’t find out for a few minutes that we are immune, and I don’t think they can, as I have so ad-
justed the screen that it is now absorbing instead of radiating.
“Tell the captain to put the ship into heaviest possible battle order, everything full on, as soon as the men can
handle themselves. Then I want to make a few suggestions.” .
“What happened, anyway?” the Communications Officer” semi-conscious now, was demanding. “Something hit me
and tore my brain apart-I couldn’t think, couldn’t do a thing. My mind was all chewed up by curly pinwheels. . . .”
Throughout the vast battleship of space men raved briefly in delirium; but, the cause removed, recovery was rapid
and complete. Martin explained matters to the captain, that worthy issued orders, and soon the flagship had in
readiness all her weapons, both of defense and of offense.
“Doctor Stone, who knows more about the automatons than does any other human being, will tell us what to do
next,” the Flight Director said.
“The first thing to do is to locate them,” Stone, now temporary commander” stated crisply. “They have taken over at
least one of our vessels, probably one close to us” so as to be near the center of the formation. Radio room, put out
tracers on wave point oh oh two seven one . . .” He went on to give exact and highly technical instructions as to the
tuning of the detectors.
“We have found them, sir,” soon came the welcome report. “One ship, the Dresden, coordinates 42-79-63.” “That
makes it bad-very bad,” Stone, reflected, audibly. “We can’t expand the zone to release another ship from the
control of the robots without enveloping the Dresden and exposing ourselves. Can’t surprise them they’re ready
for anything. It’s rather long range” too.” The vessels of the Fleet were a thousand miles apart, being in open order
for high-velocity flight in open space. “Torpedoes would be thrown off by her meteorite deflectors. Only one thing
to do, Captain-close in and tear into her with everything you’ve got.”
“But the men in her!” protested Martin.
“Dead long ago,” snapped the expert. “Probably been animated corpses for days. Take a look if you want to; won’t
do any harm now. Radio, put us on as many of the Dresden’s television plates as you can-besides, what’s the crew
of one ship compared to the hundreds of thousands of men in the rest of the Fleet? We can’t burn her out at one
blast” anyway. They’ve got real brains and the same armament we have” and will certainly kill the crew at the first
blast, if they haven’t done it already. Afraid it’ll be a near thing, getting away from the sun, even with eleven other
ships to help us-”
He broke off as the beam operators succeeded in making connection briefly with the plates of the Dresden. One
glimpse” then the visibeams were cut savagely” but that glimpse was enough. They saw that their sistership was
manned completely by automatons. In her every compartment men, all too plainly dead, lay wherever they had
chanced to fall. The captain swore a startled oath, then bellowed orders; and the flagship” driving projectors
fiercely aflame” rushed to come to grips with the Dresden.
“You intimated something about help,” Martin suggested. “Can you release some of the other ships from the auto-
maton’s yoke” after all?”
“Got to-or roast. This is bound to be a battle of attrition-we can’t crush her screens alone until her power is
exhausted and we’ll be in the sun long before then. I see only one possible way out. We’ll have to build a
neutralizing generator for every lifeboat this ship carries, and send each one out to release one other ship in our
Fleet from the robot’s grip. Eleven boats-that’ll make twelve to concentrate on her-about all that could attack at
once” anyway. That way will take so much time that it will certainly be touch-and-go, but it’s the only thing we can
do”
as far as I can see. Give me ten good radio men and some mechanics, and we’ll get at it.”
While the technicians were coming on the run Stone issued final instructions:
“Attack with every weapon you can possibly use. Try to break down the Dresden’s meteorite shields” so that you
can use our shells and torpedoes. Burn every gram of fuel that your generators will take. Don’t try to save it. The
more you burn the more they’ll have to, and the quicker we can take ’em. We can refuel you easily enough from the
other vessels if we get away.”
Then, while Stone and his technical experts labored upon the generators of the screens which were to protect
eleven more of the gigantic vessels against the thought destroying radiations of the automatons, and while the
computers calculated, minute by minute, the exact progress of the Fleet toward the blazing sun, the flagship
Washington drove in upon the rebellious Dresden, her main forward battery furiously aflame. Drove in until the
repellor screens of the two vessels locked and buckled. Then Captain Malcolm really opened up.
That grizzled four-striper had been at a loss-knowing little indeed of the oscillatory nature of thought and still less
of the abstruse mathematics in which Ferdinand Stone took such delight-but here was something that he understood
thoroughly. He knew his ship, knew her every weapon and her every whim, knew to the final volt and to the ultimate
ampere her Gargantuan capacity both to give it and to take it. He could fight his ship-and how he fought her!
From every projector that could be brought to bear there flamed out against the Dresden beams of energy and of a
potency indescribable, at whose scintillant areas of contact the defensive screen of the robot-manned cruiser
flared into terribly resplendent brilliance. Every type of lethal vibratory force was hurled, upon every usable de-
structive frequency.
Needle-rays and stabbingly penetrant stilettos of fire thrust and thrust again. Sizzling, flashing planes cut and
slashed. The heaviest annihilating and disintegrating beams generable by man clawed and tore in wild abandon.
And over all and through all the stupendously powerful blanketing beams-so furiously driven that the coils and
commutators of their generators fairly smoked and that the refractory throats of their projectors glared radiantly
violet and began slowly, stubbornly to volatilize-raved out in all their pyrotechnically incandescent might, striving
prodigiously to crush by their sheer power the shielding screens of the vessel of the automatons.
Nor was the vibratory offensive alone. Every gun, primary or auxiliary” that could be pointed at the Dresden was
vomiting smoke- and flame-enshrouded steel as fast as automatic loaders could serve it” and under that continuous,
appallingly silent concussion the giant frame of the flagship shuddered and trembled in every plate and member.
And from every launching-tube there were streaming the deadliest missiles known to science; radio-dirigible tor-
pedoes which, looping in vast circles to attain the highest possible measure of momentum, crashed against the
Dresden’s meteorite deflectors in Herculean efforts to break them down; and, in failing to do so, exploded and
filled all space with raging flame and with flying fragments of metal.
Captain Malcolm was burning his stores of fuel and munitions at an appalling rate, careless alike of exhaustion of
reserves and of service-life of equipment. All his generators were running at a shockingly ruinous overload, his
every projector was being used so mercilessly that not even their powerful refrigerators, radiating the transported
heat into the interplanetary cold from the dark side of the ship” could keep their refractory linings in place for
long.
And through raging beam, through blasting ray, through crushing force; through storm of explosive and through rain
of metal the Dresden remained apparently unscathed. Her screens were radiating high into the violet, but they
showed no sign of weakening or of going down. Neither did the meteorite deflectors break down. Everything held.
Since she was armed as capably as was the flagship and was being fought by inhumanly intelligent monstrosities”