"Surround the cluster and close in," the admiral directed; and, under the guidance now of two hundred Rigellians, civilization's vast Grand Fleet closed smoothly in and went inert. Drivers flared white as they fought to match the intrinsic velocity of the cluster. "Vice admirals of all fleets, attention! Using secondaries only, fire at will upon any enemy object coming within range. Engage outlying structures and such battle craft as may appear. Keep assigned distance from planet and stiffen cosmic screens to maximum. Haynes--off!" From untold millions of projectors there raved out gigantic rods, knives, and needles of force, under the impact of which the defensive screens of Jalte's guardian citadels flamed into terrible refulgence. Duodec bombs were hurled--tight-beam-directed monsters of destruction which, swinging around in huge circles to attain the highest possible measure of momentum, flung themselves against Boskone's defenses in Herculean attempts to smash them down. They exploded; each as it burst filling all nearby space with blindingly intense violet light and with flying scraps of metal. Q-type helices, driven with all the frightful kilowattage possible to Medonian conductors and insulation, screwed in, biting, gouging, tearing in wild abandon. Shear-planes, hellish knives of force beside which Tellurian lightning is pale and wan, struck and struck and struck again--fiendishly, crunchingly. But those grimly stolid fortresses could take it. They had been repowered; their defenses stiffened to such might as to defy, in the opinion of Boskone's experts, any projectors capable of being mounted upon mobile bases. And not only could they take it--those formidably armed and armored planetoids could dish it out as well. The screens of the Patrol ships flared high into the spectrum under the crushing force of sheer enemy power. Not a few of those defenses were battered down, clear to the wall shields, before the unimaginable ferocity of the Boskonian projectors could be neutralized. * * * * * And at this spectacularly frightful deep-space engagement Jalte, Boskone's galactic director, and through him Eichmil, First of Boskone itself, stared in stunned surprise. "It is insane!" Jalte gloated. "The fools judged our strength by that of Helmuth; not considering that we, as well as they, would be both learning and doing during the intervening time. They have a myriad of ships, but mere numbers will never conquer my outposts, to say nothing of my works here." "They are not fools. I am not sure--" Eichmil cogitated. He would have been even less sure could he have listened to a conversation which was even then being held. "QX, Thorndyke?" Kinnison asked. "On the green," came instant reply. "Intrinsic, placement, releases--everything on the green!"