le blue tractor rod
upon the sixth and last of the enemy fleet, he drove a torpedo through
the gaping wall and into the interior of the helpless war-vessel. There
he exploded it, and the awful charge, detonated in that confined space,
literally tore the globular space-ship to bits.

"We'll show these jaspers what kind of trees make shingles!" he gritted
between clenched teeth; and his eyes, hard now as gray iron, fairly
emitted sparks as he launched four torpedoes upon the sole remaining
globe of the squadron of the void. "I've had a lot of curiosity to know
just what kind of unnatural monstrosities can possibly have such
fiendish dispositions as they've got--but beasts, men or devils, they'll
find they've grabbed something this time they can't let go of," and
fierce blasts of energy ripped from the exhausts as he drove his
missiles, at their highest possible acceleration, toward the captive
sphere so savagely struggling at the extremity of his tractor beam.

But that one remaining vessel was to prove no such easy victim as had
its sister ships. Being six to one, and supposedly invincible, the
squadron had been overconfident and had attacked carelessly, with only
its crippling slicing beams instead of its more deadly weapons of total
destruction; and so fierce and hard had been Stevens' counter-attack
that five of its numbers had been destroyed before they realized what
powerful armament was mounted by that apparently crude, helpless,
and innocuous wedge. The sixth, however, was fully warned, and every
resource at the command of its hellish crew was now being directed
against the _Forlorn Hope_.

Sheets, cones, and gigantic rods of force flashed and crackled. Space
was filled with silent, devastating tongues of flame. 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. Hard driven as
those pushers were, they could find no footing, but were reflected at
many angles by that untouchable mirror and their utmost force scarcely
impeded the progress of the rocket-propelled missiles. Comparatively
small as the projectiles were, however, they soon felt the effects of
the prodigious beams of heat enveloping them, and torpedo after torpedo
exp