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Arcot hesitated, then with a grin slipped it on. "Relax," came a voice in Arcot's head, a low, droning voice, a voice of command. "Sleep," it added. Arcot felt himself floating down an infinite shaft, on some superflying suit that did not pull at him with its straps, just floating down lightly, down and down and down.
In seconds, under Arcot's flying thought manipulation, a great tube had been welded to the original hull, and the already gigantic ship lengthened by more than five hundred feet! Immediately great artificial matter tools gripped the broken nose-section, clamped it into place, and welded it with cosmium flowing under the inconceivable pressure till it was again a single great hull.
And the extreme strength of the lux metal fiber made it stronger, pound for pound, than steel or coronium. On Arcot's back was a pack of relux plated metal. It was connected by relux web belts to a broad belt that circled Arcot's waist. One thin cable ran down the right arm to a small relux tube about eight inches long by two inches in diameter. "Watch!" Arcot said, grinning.
For a moment none of them made any suggestions, then slowly came Arcot's thoughts, clear and sharp, the thoughts of carefully weighed decision. "The swiftest thing that ever was thought! The most irresistible thing, thought, for nothing can stop its progress. The most destructive thing, thought.
The chances that one star, surrounded by a system of planets, should pass within a hundred billion miles of another star, similarly accompanied, was one in billions of billions. That both systems should have been inhabited by intelligent races It is easy to understand why the scientists could not believe Arcot's theory of attack from another sun until they had actually seen those other worlds.
The iron bones transmitted the shock beautifully to the delicate brain; the man's head jerked back, and he collapsed to the floor. Arcot's hand felt as though he'd hit it with a hammer, but he was far too busy to pay any attention to the pain. Morey, too, had realized the futility of trying to overcome the guards by wrestling. The only thing to do was dodge and punch.
"I suppose that's all true but you draw only about six thousand a year for personal expenses a good clerk could get that and you, admittedly the most brilliant physicist of the Earth, are satisfied! I don't feel we're paying you properly!" Arcot's expression became suddenly serious. "You can repay me this time," he said, "for this latest discovery has made a new thing possible.
Then came the inexorable crush of the artificial matter, and a ball of matter alone remained. But the pressing disc of the battle-front which had been lowering on Chicago, greatest of Earth's metropolises, was lifted. This disc-front was staggering back now as Arcot's mighty ship weakened its strength, and destroyed its morale, under the steady drive of the now hopeful Solarians.
At Arcot's direction Morey signaled the other groups of scientists to get out of danger with all speed, warning of the impending blow-up. As the moments sped by the tension mounted. Arcot stared fixedly into the screen before him, keeping the giant space ship in focus. As they sped mile upon miles away from it, he began to relax a bit. Not a word was spoken as they watched and waited.
And every sun pouring out its energy at the rate of quintillions of horsepower every instant! "But it's too great for man to have I am going to forget it, lest man be destroyed by his own might." Arcot's halting speech told of his intense thought of a dream of such awful energies as man had never before conceived. His eyes looked unseeing at the black velvet of space with its few, scattered stars.
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