Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/68

56 considerable doubts as to what really would occur in the heat of a great engagement.

The officers were all trained scientists; for no one could possibly work these flying collections of mechanism and scientific instruments without having spent years in studying the abstrusities of physics. The men who formed the crews had only to move the levers and turn the wheels as they were ordered, so they needed no special education beyond a little practice. The captains and admirals were mostly gray-haired men who were adepts at interstellar tactics, and had grown old in the study of the means of destruction. Some of the largest ships carried as many as three captains under the orders of a chief-captain, so vast was the machine which had to be controlled.

The aspect presented by the whole fleet was magnificent in the extreme. The great shining hulls bristling with guns and covered with men, moving about like ants, glittered in the sun. Here and there