Pilot Henry Henderson cut his Bergenholm the vessel lurched wildly aside as its intrinsic velocity was restored.
Henderson's fingers swept over his board as rapidly and as surely as those of an organist over the banked keys of his console; producing, not chords and arpeggios of harmony, but roaring blasts of precisely-controlled power. Each key-like switch controlled one jet. Lightly and fleetingly touched, it produced a gentle urge; at sharp, full contact it yielded a mighty, solid shove; depressed still farther, so as to lock into any one of a dozen notches, it brought into being a torrent of propulsive force of any desired magnitude, which ceased only when its key-release was touched.
And Henderson was a virtuoso. Smoothly, effortlessly, but in a space of seconds the great vessel rolled over, spiralled, and swung until her landing jets were in line and exerting five gravities of thrust. Then, equally smoothly, almost imperceptibly, the line of force was varied until the flame-enshrouded dome was stationary below them. Nobody, not even the two other Master Pilots, and least of all Henderson himself, paid any attention to the polished perfection, the consummate artistry, of the performance. That was his job. He was a Master Pilot, and one of the hallmarks of his rating was the habit of making difficult maneuvers look easy.
Take 'em now, Chief? Can't we, huh?" Chatway, the Chief Firing Officer, did not say those words. He did not need to. The attitude and posture of the C.F.O. and his subordinates made the thought tensely plain.
"Not yet, Chatty," the Lensman answered the unsent thought. "We'll have to wait until they englobe us, so we can get 'em all. It's got to be all or none—if even one of them gets away or even has time to analyze and report on the stuff we're going to use it'll be just too bad."
He then got in touch with the officer within the beleaguered base and renewed the conversation at the point at which it had been broken off.
"We can help you, I think; but to do so effectively we must have clear ether. Will you please order your ships away, out of even extreme range?"
"For how long? They can do us irreparable damage in one rotation of the planet."
"One-twentieth of that time, at most—if we can't do it in that time we can't do it at all.
Nor will they direct many beams at you, if any. They'll be working on us."
Then, as the defending ships darted away, Kinnison turned to his C.F.O.
"QX, Chatty. Open up with your secondaries. Fire at will!"
Then from projectors of a power theretofore carried only by maulers there raved out against the nearest Boskonian vessels beams of a vehemence compared to which the enemies'
own seemed weak, futile. And those were the secondaries!
As has been intimated, the Dauntless was an unusual ship. She was enormous. She was bigger even than a mauler in actual bulk and mass; and from needle-beaked prow to jet-studded stern she was literally packed with power—power for any emergency conceivable to the fertile minds of Port Admiral Haynes and his staff of designers and engineers. Instead of two, or at most three intake-screen exciters, she had two hundred. Her bus-bars, instead of being the conventional rectangular coppers, of a few square inches cross-sectional area, were laminated members built up of co-axial tubing of pure silver to a diameter of over a yard—multiple and parallel conductors, each of whose current-carrying capacity was to be measured only in millions of amperes. And everything else aboard that mighty engine of destruction was upon the same Gargantuan scale.
Titanic though those thrusts were, not a pirate ship was seriously hurt. Outer screens went down, and more than a few of the second lines of defense also failed. But that was the Patrolmen's strategy; to let the enemy know that they had weapons of offense somewhat superior to their own, but not quite powerful enough to be a real menace.
In minutes, therefore, the Boskonians rushed up and proceeded
Henderson's fingers swept over his board as rapidly and as surely as those of an organist over the banked keys of his console; producing, not chords and arpeggios of harmony, but roaring blasts of precisely-controlled power. Each key-like switch controlled one jet. Lightly and fleetingly touched, it produced a gentle urge; at sharp, full contact it yielded a mighty, solid shove; depressed still farther, so as to lock into any one of a dozen notches, it brought into being a torrent of propulsive force of any desired magnitude, which ceased only when its key-release was touched.
And Henderson was a virtuoso. Smoothly, effortlessly, but in a space of seconds the great vessel rolled over, spiralled, and swung until her landing jets were in line and exerting five gravities of thrust. Then, equally smoothly, almost imperceptibly, the line of force was varied until the flame-enshrouded dome was stationary below them. Nobody, not even the two other Master Pilots, and least of all Henderson himself, paid any attention to the polished perfection, the consummate artistry, of the performance. That was his job. He was a Master Pilot, and one of the hallmarks of his rating was the habit of making difficult maneuvers look easy.
Take 'em now, Chief? Can't we, huh?" Chatway, the Chief Firing Officer, did not say those words. He did not need to. The attitude and posture of the C.F.O. and his subordinates made the thought tensely plain.
"Not yet, Chatty," the Lensman answered the unsent thought. "We'll have to wait until they englobe us, so we can get 'em all. It's got to be all or none—if even one of them gets away or even has time to analyze and report on the stuff we're going to use it'll be just too bad."
He then got in touch with the officer within the beleaguered base and renewed the conversation at the point at which it had been broken off.
"We can help you, I think; but to do so effectively we must have clear ether. Will you please order your ships away, out of even extreme range?"
"For how long? They can do us irreparable damage in one rotation of the planet."
"One-twentieth of that time, at most—if we can't do it in that time we can't do it at all.
Nor will they direct many beams at you, if any. They'll be working on us."
Then, as the defending ships darted away, Kinnison turned to his C.F.O.
"QX, Chatty. Open up with your secondaries. Fire at will!"
Then from projectors of a power theretofore carried only by maulers there raved out against the nearest Boskonian vessels beams of a vehemence compared to which the enemies'
own seemed weak, futile. And those were the secondaries!
As has been intimated, the Dauntless was an unusual ship. She was enormous. She was bigger even than a mauler in actual bulk and mass; and from needle-beaked prow to jet-studded stern she was literally packed with power—power for any emergency conceivable to the fertile minds of Port Admiral Haynes and his staff of designers and engineers. Instead of two, or at most three intake-screen exciters, she had two hundred. Her bus-bars, instead of being the conventional rectangular coppers, of a few square inches cross-sectional area, were laminated members built up of co-axial tubing of pure silver to a diameter of over a yard—multiple and parallel conductors, each of whose current-carrying capacity was to be measured only in millions of amperes. And everything else aboard that mighty engine of destruction was upon the same Gargantuan scale.
Titanic though those thrusts were, not a pirate ship was seriously hurt. Outer screens went down, and more than a few of the second lines of defense also failed. But that was the Patrolmen's strategy; to let the enemy know that they had weapons of offense somewhat superior to their own, but not quite powerful enough to be a real menace.
In minutes, therefore, the Boskonians rushed up and proceeded
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