would be their actual guide.

At the maximum speed of the time apparatus, for thus they could better
follow the constellations, the _Thought_ plunged along in the wake of
the tiny scout ship that had already landed on Thett. And, hours later,
they saw the giant red sun of Antseck, the star of Thett and its system.

"We're about there," said Arcot, a peculiar tenseness showing in his
thoughts. "Shall we barge right in, or wait and investigate?"

"Well have to chance it. Where is their main fort here?"

"From the direction, I should say it was to the left and ahead of our
position," replied Zezdon Afthen.

The ship moved ahead, while about it the tremendous Thessian battlefleet
buzzed like flies, thousands of ships now, and more coming with each
second.

In a few moments the titanic ship had crossed a great plain, and came to
a region of bare, rocky hills several hundred feet high. Set in those
hills, surrounded by them, was a huge sphere, resting on the ground. As
though by magic the Thessian fleet cleared away from the _Thought_. The
last one had not left, when Arcot shot a terrific cosmic ray toward the
sphere. It was relux, and he knew it, but he knew what would happen when
that cosmic ray hit it. The solometer flickered and steadied at three as
that inconceivable ray flashed out.

Instantly there was a terrific explosion. The soil exploded into
hydrogen atoms, and expanded under heat that lashed it to more than a
million degrees in the tiniest fraction of a second. The terrific recoil
of the ray-pressure was taken by all space, for it was generated in
space itself, but the direct pressure struck the planet, and that
titanic planet reeled! A tremendous fissure opened, and the section that
had been struck by the ray smashed its way suddenly far into the planet,
and a geyser of fluid rock rolled over it, twenty miles deep in that
world. The relux sphere had been struck by the ray, and had turned it,
with the result that it was pushed doubly hard. The enormously thick
relux strained and dented, then shot down as a whole, into the
incandescent rock.

For miles the vaporized rock was boiling off. Then the fort sent out a
ray, and that ray blasted the rock that had flowed over it as Arcot's
titanic ray snapped out. In moments the fort was at the surface
again--and a molecular hit it. The molecular did not have the energy the
cosmic had carried, but it was a single concentrated beam of destruction
ten feet across. I