int designated by flagship observers will proceed
toward it at maximum; squadrons nearest it will decelerate or reverse
velocity--that point must not be approached until full Fleet formation
has been accomplished. Heavy and Light Cruisers of all other sectors
inside the orbit of Mars ..." the orders went on, directing the
mobilization of the stupendous forces of the League, so that they would
be in readiness in the highly improbable event of the failure of the
massed power of seven sectors to reduce the pirate base.

In those seven sectors perhaps a dozen vessels threw out enormous
spherical screens of intense red light, and as they did so their tracer
points upon all the interlocked lookout plates also became ringed about
with red. Toward those crimson markers the pilots of the unmarked
vessels directed their courses at their utmost power; and while the
white lights upon the lookout plates moved slowly toward and clustered
about the red ones--the ultra-instruments of the Secret Service
operatives were probing into space, sweeping the neighborhood of the
computed position of the pirate's stronghold.

But the object sought was so far away that the small spy-ray sets of the
Secret Service men, intended as they were for close-range work, were
unable to make contact with the invisible planetoid for which they were
seeking. In the captain's sanctum of the _Chicago_, the operative
studied his plate for only a minute or two, then shut off his power and
fell into a brown study, from which he was rudely aroused.

"Aren't you even going to _try_ to find them?" demanded the captain.

"No," Cleve returned shortly. "No use--not half enough power or control.
I'm trying to think ... maybe ... say, Captain, will you please have the
Chief Electrician and a couple of radio men come in here?"

They came, and for hours, while the other ultra-wave men searched the
apparently empty ether with their ineffective beams, the three technical
experts and the erstwhile Quartermaster's clerk labored upon a huge and
complex ultra-wave projector--the three blindly and with doubtful
questions; the one with sure knowledge at least of what he was trying to
do. Finally the thing was done, the crude but efficient graduated
circles were set, and the tubes glowed redly as their solidly massed
output was driving into a tight beam of ultra-vibration. "There it is,
sir," Cleve reported, after some ten minutes of delicate manipulation,
and the vast structure