Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/215

Rh At last they approached Nanius, the outside planet of Sirius. The cruisers were sent on in front to find out the whereabouts of the enemy's ships, but they went forward without any opposition; they did not even encounter a single war-ship. The fact of the matter was that the Sirians had been so elated by their victories that they had sent the fleet which had been previously stationed in these regions to help in conquering the earth. Besides this, the few of their ships that had escaped from the earth had only as yet performed half of their journey, so the people of Kairet were still quite in ignorance of the sudden reversal that had taken place in their fortunes.

So the Anglo-Saxon fleets passed the orbit of Nanius without striking a single blow. The next planet whose orbit they passed was on the further side of Sirius, so they advanced some distance into the Sirian system without their presence being