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Updated: June 23, 2025
The Mirans were not waiting contemptuously this time. In an instant the great interstellar ship rose from its berth, its weapons working angrily. The crumbler ray snapped out at the T-253. Kendall stared into the periscope visor intently. Clumsily his padded hands worked at the specially adapted controls. The soft hiss of the oxygen release into his suit disturbed him slightly.
His ship was drifting slowly away from the greater ship. Presently, however, the Miran put on speed in the direction of Earth, and the T-253 fell far behind. The Miran was not seriously injured. But that scout pilot, in sacrificing life, had thrown dust in their eyes for just those few moments Kendall had needed to lose a lightless ship in lightless space lightless for the Mirans at any rate.
The Mirans there looked up at him with drawn faces. "The instruments Gresth Gkae the instruments. The instruments read impossible things, the motors worked without reason, the fields fluctuated the atomic engines stopped and the magnetic shield broke down and gripped part of the ship instead!" reported the bewildered pilot. "I do not know some strange weapon of " began the old scientist.
And neutron guns in plenty waited on small ships just outside the atmosphere to explode harmlessly any atomic or gamma bombs Miran ships might attempt to deposit. An attack on Luna was the first step. But that terrible, gigantic fort on Luna worried them. Yet while that fort existed, Earth ships were free to come and go, for Mirans could not afford to stand near.
Still a few hours of work, and the IP stations on Jupiter had rolled wildly across the flat plains of the planet like dented cans, to end in utter destruction. The Mirans had paid no attention to the fleeing passenger and freighter ships that left the planet, loaded to the utmost with human cargo, and absolutely no freight.
The Mirans returned to Jupiter, and to the outer planets where they had further established themselves. Most of the Solar system was theirs. But the Solarians still held the choicest planets and kept the Mirans from using the mild-temperatured Mars. "They can't take this, at least," sighed McLaurin as they retreated from Luna. "I didn't think they could right away.
Meanwhile they amused themselves occasionally by planting a gamma-ray bomb in each of Mars' major cities. They made Mars uninhabitable for Solarians as well as for Mirans, at least until the deadly slow-action atomic explosives wore off, or were removed. Then the Mirans, after a lapse of three weeks while they dug in their toes on Jupiter, prepared to leap. Earth was the next goal.
The IP fleet had to go to their rescue with oxygen tanks to take care of the extra humans, but nearly three-quarters of the population of Jupiter, a newly established population, and hence a readily mobile one, was saved. The others, the Mirans did not bother with particularly except when they happened to be near where the Mirans wanted to work.
There were three IP stations on the planet itself, but they were vastly hindered by the thick, almost ultra-violet-proof atmosphere of Jupiter. Their rays were weak. And the magnetic fields of the Mirans were unaffected. Only their atomic bombs were hindered by the heavier gravity that pulled the rocks back in place faster than the bombs could throw them out.
He ordered that all IP stations save these two be deserted, and all mercury fuel reserves be moved to Deenmor and Mars Center. The Mirans could not land on the North Western section of Mars, nor in the South Central region.
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