Then the light cruisers began slipping through the screen of scouts to take their positions. Suddenly, a number of great beams of energy stabbed up toward them from below, and the screens of the cruisers flared in brilliant confiscations of flame as those mighty rays struck them. "Don't you cruisers and scouts take foolish chances!" High Admiral Ferguson's voice rasped into the mike. "If those beams are too hot, get back fast! Heavy cruisers and battleships, down!" Instantly Hanlon could feel the surge of acceleration as the great ship he was riding plummeted planetward. In the plate he and his father were scanning, he could see the dots of blue light that identified the nearest scouts, and a moment later the greens of the light cruisers. Then those dots fled behind his range of vision as the heavies flashed past them. The plate Hanlon was using was of limited vision, so he could not see the battle as a whole, as High Admiral Ferguson could in his wide-coverage screens. Only what was going on directly below and close to either side was visible to Hanlon. Yet he could see several of those great, stabbing beams reaching out toward the fleet. A change in color at one edge of his plate caught his eye, and he saw the ship nearest on his right begin to glow as a heavy beam from below worked on its screens, burrowing its way in and in, trying to blast the ship out of existence. Great streams of radiance struck and ricocheted from its screens, which were swiftly mounting through the spectrum as more and more power was thrown against them by the enemy below. The air in the Sirius began to grow hotter, and his father answered his inquiring look, "They're attacking us, too, and that's heating us up. Hope our screens hold," he grinned grimly. "You said it." A shiver of fear gripped the young man, and he could feel himself trembling. His father threw a comforting arm across his shoulders. "First battles are always toughest," he said evenly, and Hanlon calmed instantly. He turned his attention to the screen again. That neighboring ship was struggling desperately to escape, knowing she could not stand much more. "What's the matter with that pilot?" Hanlon yelled. "Why don't he flip her over and beat it?" "Seems to be held by something," his father's anxious voice was tense. "Have those others got some sort of tractor beam?" "Tractors?" Hanlon looked up in surprise. "I've read about them, but thought they were impossible." "Impossible to us because we haven't got 'em yet," Newton said absently. "They are theoretically possible." Every beam from every Corps ship was piercing downward. Suddenly other ships were appearing, and the young man realized that the light cruisers were coming down to add their might to that of the battleships and heavies.