the captured Vorkulian fortress into
the air.

As the heptagon lurched upward, the massive door of a lower projector
locker clanged shut and Kromodeor collapsed in a corner, his
consciousness blotted out.

* * * * *

"Well, that certainly tears it! That's a ... I...." Stevens' ready
vocabulary failed him and he turned to Brandon, who was still staring
narrow-eyed into the plate, watching the destruction of the hexan city.

"They've got something, all right--you've got to hand it to them,"
Brandon replied. "And we thought we knew something about forces and
physical phenomena in general. Those birds have forgotten more than we
ever will know. Just one of those things could take the whole I-P fleet,
armed as we are now, any morning before breakfast, just for setting-up
exercises. We've got to do something about it--but what?"

"It's okay--whatever you say. There may be an out somewhere, but I don't
see it," and Stevens' gloomy tone matched his words.

Highly trained scientists both, they had been watching that which
transcended all the science of the inner planets and knew themselves
outclassed immeasurably.

"Only one thing to do, as I see it," Brandon cogitated. "That's to keep
on going straight out, the way we're headed now. We'd better call a
council of war, to dope out a line of action."

CHAPTER XII

The Citadel in Space

For the first time in many days Brandon and Westfall sat at dinner in
the main dining room of the _Sirius_. They were enjoying greatly the
unaccustomed pleasure of a leisurely, formal meal; but still their
talk concerned the projection of pure forces instead of subjects more
appropriate to the table; still their eyes paid more attention to
diagrams drawn upon scraps of paper than to the diners about them.

"But I tell you, Quince, you're full of little red ants, clear to the
neck!" Brandon snorted, as Westfall waved one of his arguments aside.
"You must have had help to get that far off--no one man could possibly
be as wrong as you are. Why, those fields absolutely will...."

"Hi, Quincy! Hi, Norman!" a merry voice interrupted. "Still fighting as
usual, I see! What kind of knights are you, anyway, to rescue us poor
damsels in distress, and then never even know that we're alive?" A tall,
willowy brunette had seen the two physicists as she entered the saloon,
and came over to their table, a hand outstretched to each in cordial
greeting.

"Ho, Ve