h power to decide the issue, and we will
have the pictures to study, which is all-important. Besides, we've
probably lost Conway Costigan to-day, and we don't want to lose _you_,
too."

Cleveland remained silent, pondering this startling news, but the
grizzled Captain, veteran of the Fourth Jovian War that he was, was not
convinced.

"We'll blow them out of space, Mr. Samms!" he declared.

"You just think you will, Captain. I have suggested, as forcibly as
possible, that the general attack be withheld until after a thorough
investigation is made, but the Admiralty will not listen. They see the
advisability of withdrawing a camera ship, but that is as far as they
will go."

"And that's plenty far enough!" growled the _Chicago's_ commander, as
the beam snapped off. "Mr. Cleveland, I don't like the idea of running
away under fire, and I won't do it without direct orders from the
Admiral."

"Of course you won't--that's why you are going...."

He was interrupted by a voice from the Headquarters speaker. The captain
stepped up to the plate and, upon being recognized, he received the
exact orders which had been requested by the Chief of the Secret
Service--now not as secret as it had been heretofore.

Thus it was that the _Chicago_ reversed her acceleration, cut off her
red screen, and fell rapidly behind, while the vessels following her in
their loose cone formation shot away toward another crimson-flaring
leader. Farther and farther back she dropped, back to the limiting range
of the ultra-cameras upon which Cleveland and his highly trained
assistants were furiously and unremittingly at work. And during all this
time the forces of the seven sectors had been concentrating. The pilot
vessels, with their flaming red screens, each followed by a cone of
space-ships, drew closer and closer together, approaching the
_Fearless_--the British super-dreadnaught which was to be the flagship
of the Fleet--the mightiest and heaviest space-ship which had yet lifted
her stupendous mass into the ether.

Now, systematically and precisely, the great Cone of Battle was coming
into being; a formation developed during the Jovian Wars while the
forces of the Three Planets were fighting in space for their very
civilizations' existence, and one never used since the last space-fleets
of Jupiter's murderous hordes had been wiped out.

The mouth of that enormous hollow cone was a ring of scout patrols, the
smallest and most agile vessels of