d race
through space, faster than light, headed for their base.

"That was fair fight; energy against energy," said Arcot delightedly,
for his new toy, which made playthings of suns and fed on the cosmic
energy of a universe, was behaving nicely, "and as I said, Stel Felso
Theu, at the beginning of this war, the greater Power wins, always. And
in our island here, I have five hundred thousand million separate power
plants, each generating at the rate of decillions of ergs a second,
backing this ship.

"Your world will be safe now, and we will head for our last embattled
ally, Sirius." The titanic ship turned, and disappeared from the view of
the madly rejoicing billions of Talso below, as it sped, far faster than
light, across a universe to relieve another sorely tried civilization.

Knowing their cause was lost, hopeless in the knowledge that nothing
known to them could battle that enormous force concentrated in one ship,
the _Thought_, the Thessians had but one aim now, to do all the damage
in their power before leaving.

Already their tremendous, unarmed and unarmored transports were
departing with their hundreds of thousands from that base system for the
far-off Island of Space from which they had come. Their battlefleets
were engaged in destroying all the cities of the allies, and those other
helpless races of our system that they could. Those other inhabited
worlds, many of which were completely wiped out because Arcot had no
knowledge of them, were relieved only when the general call for retreat
to protect the mother planet was sent out.

But Sirius was looming enormous before them. And its planets, heavily
defended now by the combined Sirian, Terrestrial and Venerian fleets and
great ray screens as well as a few matter-bomb stations, were suffering
losses none the less. For the old Sixth of Negra, the Third here, had
fallen. Slipping in on the night side of the planet, all power off, and
so sending forth no warning impulses till it actually fell through the
ray screen, a small fleet of scouts had entered. Falling still under
simple gravity, they had been missed by the rays till they had fallen to
so small a distance, that no humans or men of our allied systems could
have stopped, but only their enormous iron boned strength permitted them
to resist the acceleration they used to avert collision with the planet.
Then scattering swiftly, they had blasted the great protective screen
stations by attacking on the s