Page:Amazing Stories Volume 10 Number 13.djvu/49

Rh followed the Strangers home. Devin and a few of the most advanced physicists would stay with McLaurin in case of need.

N hour later the "S Doradus" rose gently, soundlessly from her berth, and floated out of the opened lock-door. The "Cephid" followed her in five seconds. Still under the great screen of the fort, the lashing, corruscating colors of the magnetic bombs and the magnetic screen flashed and was iridescent. The "S Doradus" poked her great nose gently through the screen, and an instant later her titanically powerful, material-engine effortlessly discharged a great magnetic bomb, sent with the combined power of five atomic powered interstellar ships. The two ships separated now, the "Cephid" under McLaurin flashing ahead with sudden, terrific acceleration toward Mars, whispering through space at a speed that made it indetectable, faster than light. The "S Doradus" journeyed out leisurely toward the fleet of forty-seven Miran ships.

Gresth Gkae saw the "S Doradus" and as he watched the steady progress, felt sudden fear at his heart. The ship seemed so certain—

At a distance of thirty thousand miles, Kendall stopped. Magnetic bombs were washing his screen continuously now, seeking to exhaust the ship as all the great ships beyond poured their energy against it. A slow smile spread over Kendall's mouth as he heard the gentle hum of the barely working material engine. Carefully he aligned the nose UV beam of the "S Doradue" on the nearest of the Miran ships. Then he depressed a switch.

There was no ion-release before the force-mirror now. Just a jet of gas whirling into a half-inch field of 'Uncertainty of the Fourth Degree.' The matter vanished instantly in released energy so stupendous that the greatest previous UV beams had been harmless things by comparison. Material energy maintained the mirror forces. Material energy gave the power that was released. And only material energy could have stood up before it. Thirty thousand miles away, a Miran ship flamed instantaneously into inconceivable incandescence, vanishing almost in blue-violet light of terrific intensity. The ship reeled away, a half-molten wreck.

The beam spotted two more ships before it winked out. Then Kendall began sending bombs. He moved up to within 2000 miles that his aim might be accurate. They were bombs of 'Uncertainty of the Third Degree,' the Uncertainty of atomic law in bomb form. One hit the nose of the nearest ship, and a sphere five feet in diameter glowed mistly blue for a moment. Then very easily, the matter that formed the wall of the cruiser began to run and change, and presently there was only a hole, and an expanding cloud of gas. Three more flowed toward it—and the hole enlarged, and another hole appeared in a bulkhead behind.

Kendall made a change. For the first time there came the staccato bark of the material engine under strain, as it fashioned the terrific fields of 'Uncertainty of the Ultimate Degree.' Abruptly they leapt out, invisible till they entered a magnetic screen, then run over with opalescent light as the energy of the field was sucked into them and released.

It struck the nose of a ship—a field no larger than an apple—