_The two globes went spinning toward the Enemy. Linked together, they
spun round and round and no conceivable computer could calculate the
path of either one so a projectile could hit. They did not travel in
a straight line, as a trajectory in space should be. Whirling as they
did around a common center of gravity, with the plane of their circling
at a sharp angle to their line of flight, it was not possible to range
them for gunfire. Their progress was in a series of curves, each at
a different distance, which no mere calculator could solve without
direction. A radar could not pick up the data a computer would need.
One or the other globe might be hit, but it was far from likely._
_The pilot of the one-man ship saw the blue-white flame of a hit. He
flung his ship about and sped back toward the fortress. The Enemy would
beat this trick, in time. Four thousand years before they'd almost won,
when they invaded the Old Nation. They were getting bolder now. There
was a time when a sound beating sent them back beyond the Coal-sack to
lick their wounds for two thousand years or better. Lately they came
more often. There'd been a raid in force only five hundred years back,
and only fifteen before that ..._
* * * * *
Holmes, obviously, had the odd dream Burke had prophesied. But Burke
was up in the instrument-room by then. Keller gazed absorbedly at
a vision-plate. It showed a section of the exterior surface of the
asteroid--harsh, naked rock, with pitiless sunlight showing the grain
and structure of the rock-crystals. Where there was shadow, the
blackness was absolute. As Burke entered, Keller turned a knob. The
image changed to a picture of a compartment inside the fortress.
It was a part of the maze of rooms and galleries that none of the
newcomers had visited. Panels and bus-bars and things which were
plainly switches covered its walls. It was a power-distribution center.
Keller turned the knob back, and the view of the outside of the
asteroid returned.
Keller turned and blinked at Burke, and then said happily, "Look!"
He went to another vision-screen with an image of another part of
the outer surface. He turned that knob, and the image dissolved into
another. This was a gigantic room, lighted like more familiar places.
In its center there was an enormous, gigantic machine. There were domes
of metal, with great rods of silvery stuff reaching across emptiness
between them. There were stairs by which one could climb to this part
and that. Judging by the steps and the size of the light-tubes, the
machine was the size of a four-storey house. And on the floor there
were smaller machines, all motionless and all cryptic.
Keller said with conviction, "Power!"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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