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The Forlorn Hope was dragged about erratically as the sphere tried to dodge those hurtling torpedoes; tried to break away from the hawser of energy anchoring her so solidly to her opponent. But the linkage held, and closer and closer Stevens drove the fourfold menace of his frightful dirigible bombs. Pressor beams beat upon them in vain.
The unit formed, a ray from each of its seven component structures seized upon a designated sphere, and under the combined power of those seven tractors, the luckless globe was literally snapped into the center of mass of the Vorkulian unit There seven dully gleaming red pressor rays leaped upon it, backed by all the power of seven gigantic fortresses, held rigidly in formation by the unimaginable mass of the structures and by their twenty-one prodigious tractor beams.
A pressor beam sent them out the airlock and through the cruiser's wake, the lander's engines screaming as its pilot fought it through maneuvers it hadn't been designed for. Corina felt a sudden lurch of fear could he do it? *He's from Clan Leras and he's battleprepped,* Medart assured her. *That part I'm not worried about can you get anything else while we're going in?*
If they wiggle away from more than fifty percent of a pressor, they're really good." The pilot maneuvered the Sirius into line, directly between Jupiter and the pentagon; and as the driving projectors went into action, Brandon drove a mighty pressor field along their axis, squarely into the center of mass of the Vorkulian fortress.
"This is their own lifeboat, and they want us alive, you know." "There's one more thing we can try hang on!" Costigan snapped, as he released his screens and threw all his power into one enormous pressor beam.
The three were thrown to the floor and held there by an awful weight, as if the lifeboat darted away at the stupendous acceleration of the beam's reaction against the unimaginable mass of the Nevian sky-rover; but the flight was of short duration. Along that pressor beam there crept a dull rod of energy, which surrounded the fugitive shell and brought it slowly to a halt.
"You might try her out with a fast hop around this world before you shove off in earnest." Under the fierce blast of her projectors the vessel leaped ahead, and time after time, as Rodebush hurled her mass upon tractor beam or pressor, the engineers sought in vain for any sign of weakness.
Tractor and pressor beams were known to men, of course, but human beings used them only under very special conditions. Their operation involved the building-up of terrific static charges. Unless a tractor-beam generator could be grounded to the object it was to pull, it tended to emit lightning-bolts at unpredictable intervals and in entirely random directions. So men didn't use them.
They have to aim something a pressor or tractor beam, most likely and pick off each rocket separately. Nearly forty seconds was consumed in taking over all twelve of our rockets. At shorter range, with less time available, a rocket might get through!" The skipper swore briefly. Then: "Mr. Taine! When the Plumies are near enough, our rockets may strike before they can be taken over! You follow?"
They took Baird through the ship's entire fabric. And their purpose, when it became clear, was startling. The Plumie ship had no rocket tubes. It had no beam-projectors except small-sized objects which were which must be their projectors of tractor and pressor beams. They were elaborately grounded to the ship's substance. But they were not originally designed for ultra-heavy service.
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