he drifting wreckage; and now the
Wandl ships were coming down, one by one. Not so many of them now; no
more than ten of them emerged.

Grantline did not follow. His ships withdrew the other way. The fog
gradually dispersed. Grantline could now take stock of the battle; he
had been victorious. One might call it that, since his percentage of
strength, numerically, was greater now than when the battle began. Ten
remaining Wandl ships, and the allies had about twenty-five.

Another hour passed. Grantline's twenty-five ships were gathered in a
close group, ten thousand miles above the Moon's surface. Under them,
the ten Wandl vessels and the _Star-Streak_ seemed ranging in a five
hundred mile circle. Down through it, on the rocks of the Moon in the
foothills of the Apennines, the mechanism established there abruptly
sprang into action.

It was a giant gravity-beam. Of infinitely greater power than any
Wandl vessel could generate, it flung out its spreading, conical ray.

So this had been the purpose of all the Wandl tactics, to manipulate
Grantline into his present position. This gravity-beam, though far
smaller, was comparable to the one used by the Wandl control station.
A rock contact against a huge mass, Wandl, and here, the Moon were
necessary to give the ray its power. No ship could generate such a
ray, so the Wandlites chose this battleground where they could
establish themselves upon our deserted Moon.

The beam had about a hundred foot diameter at its base on the rocks;
it passed upward through the circle of Wandl vessels and its spread
bathed all of Grantline's ships at once. An attractive beam, so
powerful that the ships were helpless; against all their efforts they
were pinned and drawn downward. A slight velocity at first, but with a
tremendous acceleration.

Within an hour they were hurtling, coming together as they speeded
down the narrowing cone of the beam. The ten thousand miles, their
distance above the Moon, was cut to five thousand. The Wandl ships
drew aside, keeping well out of range to let them pass; in another
thirty minutes they would crash against the rocks.

I gazed in horror from the _Star-Streak's_ turret. We were sidewise to
the angle of the beam. Grantline's ships were pulled together now into
almost a fifty-mile group. They hung all askew, helplessly pinned,
some broadside, some upended. The movement of their fall was so rapid
that even with the naked eye it was apparent.

"Got the