Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/212

200 fleet at their disposal. Every ship was fitted with the new Electro-Ednogen apparatus, so that when near a planet or other attracting body they were practically invincible.

Hardly any of the ships belonging to the people of Kairet had been able to escape beyond the radius of the moon; and those that did manage to get away were so battered about and their energies so exhausted that their progress through space was necessarily very slow. Hence the Sirians remained for a long time in complete ignorance of the catastrophe that had overtaken their fleet. But the avenging enemy was making vast preparations to invade their system, and soon a huge fleet consisting of battleships, cruisers, torpedo-boats, and transports filled with soldiers was in readiness to start.

The scene was very different to that which had witnessed the departure of the first fleet for space. Beneath the crowd of vessels were the heaped-up ruins of the