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Invisibility now is useless. Triplanetary will find us, even if we take up an orbit beyond that of Pluto!" "We have already left your Solarian system far behind. We are going to another system; one far enough removed so that the spy-rays of Triplanetary will never find us, and yet one that we can reach in a reasonable length of time with the energies at our command.
Miran radio-beams were forcing their way out toward the Miran station on Europa, to be relayed to the headquarters on Jupiter, just as Solarian radio beams were thrusting through space toward Luna. Said the Miran messages: "Their ships no longer crumble." Said the Solarian messages: "The ships no longer crumble but the men die."
While we're at it we want to so pulverize that crowd that if they never come near the Solarian system again they'll think it's twenty minutes too soon!" Thus it was that the Boise, under only a few dynes of propulsion, pursued the Nevian ship.
In form some of it was fern-like, some cactus-like, some vaguely tree-like; but it was all outrageous, inherently repulsive to all Solarian senses. And no less hideous were the animal-like forms of life, which slithered and slunk rapaciously through that fantastic pseudo-vegetation.
Even the smell of a Nevian a malodorous reek of over-ripe fish does in time become tolerable, especially if sufficiently disguised with creosote, which purely Terrestrial chemical is the most highly prized perfume of Nevia. But the head! It is that member that makes the Nevian so appalling to earthly eyes, for it is a thing utterly foreign to all Solarian history or experience.
Many of the terrestrian, or better, Solarian ships, were equipped with space distortion apparatus, now, and had some measure of safety in that the attractive rays of the Thessians could not be so concentrated on them. In numbers was safety; Arcot had been endangered because he was practically alone at the time they attacked. But it was obvious that the Solarian fleet was losing.
Making an ungainly bundle of the other Solarian equipment stored there, he dragged it along behind him as he clanked back toward his prison, until he neared the dock at which was moored the Nevian space-speedster which he was determined to take. Here, he knew, was the first of many critical points. The crew of the vessel was aboard, and, with its independent air-supply, unharmed.
The reason was that, faster than any Solarian ship, radio signals had reached McLaurin, and he, and most of the staff of the IP service had been moved to the Lunar Bank. Buck Kendall had extended an invitation in this "unexpected emergency." It so happened that Buck Kendall's invitation got there before any description of the Strangers, or their actions had arrived.
Cooper hurled his canisters of penetrating gas, Adlington his atomic iron explosive bombs, Spencer his indestructible armor-piercing projectiles, and Dutton his shatterable flasks of the quintessence of corrosion a sticky, tacky liquid of such dire potency that only one rare Solarian element could contain it.
Despite this, however, the Nigrans so greatly outnumbered the Earth-Venus forces that it looked as though a long and costly war lay ahead. At last the Solarian generals tried a ruse, a ruse they hoped would work on these beings; but they who never before had to plan a war in space, were not sure that their opponents had not had experience in the art.
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