and inconceivably fast and accurate
calculators in the ships, tied together by tight communication beams,
held them there in safety.

As he came within range of possible enemy action, Dennis pressed another
button, and the Random Computer took command. Operated by the noise a
vacuum tube generates because electrons are discrete particles, it gave
random orders, weighted only by a preference to bring the ship's course
back to the remembered target.

The column behind obeyed these same orders. The whole flight seemed to
jitter across space, moving at random but coming back to a reasonably
good course towards the target, utterly confusing any enemy fire-control
computers.

To the men in the ships, one to each, it seemed as if their very nerve
cells must jar apart. They felt themselves incapable of coherent action,
or, even, thought. But they did not need coherency. Their function was
done until the ship was out of danger, when a new formation would be
made, a new target designated, and a new order to execute given.

Because the electronic computers took care of the attack. They had to.
No human could react as fast as was needed. Out from the enemy ships
reached fingers of pure delta-field, reaching for gamma-matter. The
touch of a finger meant death in a fiery inferno as the gamma-matter
that fueled the ship and formed the war-heads of their lethal eggs would
release its total energy. There was only one defense. The delta-field
could be propagated only in a narrow beam, and at a rate much slower
than the speed of light. By keeping the enemy computers confused, they
kept those beams wandering aimlessly through space, always where the
little ships might have been, but were not. Unless their luck ran out.

Flight One kept moving in, with constantly increasing speed, except for
random variations. Once through the outer screen of small ships, a relay
closed and the link was broken between the ships of the column. Each
then moved in independent manner. The designated target was an area to
the computers, rather than a ship. Radar beams reached out to find
specific targets. As they found them and moved close, the random
computer switched off for a small moment of time, while the missiles
were dispatched on a true bearing. And then the ships moved on, leaving
their eggs behind them.

The eggs moved in with fantastic acceleration to their targets. Half
their energy went into that acceleration, to get them there before the
del