Down with them swooped our own ship now, and we shouted aloud as we saw from all the swooping ships about us, as from our own, myriad brilliant shafts of the brilliant red ray flashing down and striking the enemy ships ahead and below. Within an instant, it seemed, half those racing ships had flared and vanished in brilliant bursts of crimson light, while the rest had dipped and turned in a wild effort to escape. Back toward the two great white suns they raced, seeking to escape between them into outer space again, to rejoin the oncoming main swarm of their great fleet, but down before and ahead of them leapt our Patrol cruisers, the red rays again whirling and cutting in great circles of death. And now as they vanished one by one beneath those rays, struggling still through space toward the two great suns, the death beams of the remaining ships sprang savagely up toward us, and I saw cruisers here and there in our own fleet driving aimlessly off, smashing into one another and whirling blindly away as the beams wiped out all life in them. But now we were leaping after the fleeing ships between the great suns again, and as we shot after them through those terrific walls of flame our rays again took toll of them; so that as we flashed out from between the two mighty suns and into outer space once more but a scant half-dozen of them remained, and these leapt instantly forward and out into the blackness of outer space to rejoin the main body of their approaching fleet, while we in turn sprang after them in hot pursuit, though our ships were not capable of the tremendous speeds of those invading ones. "Score for us!" cried Jhul Din as our ships flashed on. "We've all but wiped out those hundred!" "Wait!" I told him. "The main body of their fleet's coming on toward us----" Even as I spoke I saw the ship of Lacq Larus, Chief of the Patrol, the flag-ship of our fleet, slackening its speed ahead of us, and a moment later there came from the speech-instrument beside me his clear, unruffled voice. "All ships halt and mass in battle formation!" he ordered; and at once, in answer to that command, our flashing ships slowed and stopped, forming instantly into three thick, short columns and hanging motionless in space.