"No," he decided. "If she can't crack it alone, all four of us couldn't help her much. Besides, I don't believe that she can break through it. That's a mechanical screen, you know, powered by atomic-motored generators. My guess is that it'll have to be _solved_, not cracked, and the solution will take time. When she comes down off of that peak, Kay, you might tell her so, and both of you start solving it. The rest of us have another job. The moppers-up are coming in force, and there isn't a chance that either we or the Arisians can derive the counter-formula of that screen in less than a week. Therefore the rest of this battle will have to be fought out on conventional lines. We can do the most good, I think, by spotting the Boskonians into the big tank--our scouts aren't locating five per cent of them--for the L2's to pass on to Dad and the rest of the heavy brass so that they can run this battle the way it should be run. You'll do the spotting, Cam, of course; Kat and I will do the pushing. And if you thought that Tregonsee took you for a wild ride--It'll work, don't you think?" "Of _course_ it will work--and I like wild rides--the faster the better!" Thus, apparently as though by magic, red lights winked into being throughout a third of the volume of the immense tank; and the three master strategists, informed of what was being done, heaved tremendous sighs of relief. They now had real control. They knew, not only the positions of their own task forces, but also, and exactly, the position of _every_ task force of the enemy. More, by merely forming in his mind the desire for the information, any one of the three could know, with no appreciable lapse of time, the exact composition and the exact strength of any individual one of the horde of Boskonian fleets! * * * * * Kit and his two sisters stood close-grouped, motionless; heads bent and almost touching, arms interlocked. Kinnison perceived with surprise that Lenses, as big and as bright as Kit's own, flamed upon his daughters' wrists; a surprise which changed to awe as the very air around those three red-bronze-auburn heads began to thicken, to pulsate, and to glow with that indefinable, indescribable polychromatic effulgence which is so uniquely characteristic of the Lens of the Galactic Patrol. But there was work to do, and Kinnison did it. Since the _Z9M9Z_ was now working as not even the most optimistic of her planners and designers had dared to hope that she ever could work, the war could now be, and was now being fought strategically; that is, with the object of doing the enemy as much harm as possible with the irreducible minimum of risk. It was not sporting. It was not clubby. There was nothing whatever of chivalry. There was no thought whatever of giving the enemy a break. It was massacre--it was murder--it was war.