"Well, that certainly tears it! That's a ... I...." Stevens' ready vocabulary failed him and he turned to Brandon, who was still staring narrow-eyed into the plate, watching the destruction of the hexan city. "They've got something, all right--you've got to hand it to them," Brandon replied. "And we thought we knew something about forces and physical phenomena in general. Those birds have forgotten more than we ever will know. Just one of those things could take the whole I-P fleet, armed as we are now, any morning before breakfast, just for setting-up exercises. We've got to do something about it--but what?" "It's okay--whatever you say. There may be an out somewhere, but I don't see it," and Stevens' gloomy tone matched his words. Highly trained scientists both, they had been watching that which transcended all the science of the inner planets and knew themselves outclassed immeasurably. "Only one thing to do, as I see it," Brandon cogitated. "That's to keep on going straight out, the way we're headed now. We'd better call a council of war, to dope out a line of action." CHAPTER XII The Citadel in Space For the first time in many days Brandon and Westfall sat at dinner in the main dining room of the _Sirius_. They were enjoying greatly the unaccustomed pleasure of a leisurely, formal meal; but still their talk concerned the projection of pure forces instead of subjects more appropriate to the table; still their eyes paid more attention to diagrams drawn upon scraps of paper than to the diners about them. "But I tell you, Quince, you're full of little red ants, clear to the neck!" Brandon snorted, as Westfall waved one of his arguments aside. "You must have had help to get that far off--no one man could possibly be as wrong as you are. Why, those fields absolutely will...." "Hi, Quincy! Hi, Norman!" a merry voice interrupted. "Still fighting as usual, I see! What kind of knights are you, anyway, to rescue us poor damsels in distress, and then never even know that we're alive?" A tall, willowy brunette had seen the two physicists as she entered the saloon, and came over to their table, a hand outstretched to each in cordial greeting. "Ho, Verna!" both men exclaimed, and came to their feet as they welcomed the smiling, graceful newcomer. "Sit down here, Verna--we have hardly started," Westfall invited, and Brandon looked at the girl in assumed surprise as she seated herself in the proffered chair. "Well, Verna, it's like this...." he began. "That's enough!" she broke in. "That phrase always was your introduction to one of the world's greatest brainstorms. But I know that this is the first time you have had time even to eat like civilized beings, so I'll forgive you this once. Why all the registering of amazement, Norman?" "I'm astonished that you aren't being monopolized by some husband or other. Surely the officers of the _Arcturus_ weren't so dumb that they'd stand for your still being Verna _Pickering_, were they?"