; dead center. Whatever that target had been, it was no
longer a threat.

"Kinnison, in," he reported briefly to Fire Control, and took over from
Harper the direction of the activities of Sector A.

The battle went on. Kinnison sent Harper and Drummond out time after
time. He himself was given three more targets. The first wave of the
enemy--what was left of it--passed. Sector A went into action, again at
extreme range, upon the second. Its remains, too, plunged downward and
onward toward the distant ground.

The third wave was really tough. Not that it was actually any worse than
the first two had been, but the CR10685 was no longer getting the data
which her Technos ought to have to do a good job; and every man aboard
her knew why. Some enemy stuff had got through, of course; and the
observatories, both on the ground and above it--the eye of the whole
American Defense--had suffered heavily.

Nevertheless, Kinnison and his fellows were not too perturbed. Such a
condition was not entirely unexpected. They were now veterans; they had
been tried and had not been found wanting. They had come unscathed
through a bath of fire the like of which the world had never before
known. Give them any kind of computation at all--or no computation at
all except old CR10685's own radar and their own torps, of which they
still had plenty--and they could and would take care of anything that
could be thrown at them.

The third wave passed. Targets became fewer and fewer. Action slowed
down ... stopped.

The Technos, even the Sector Chiefs, knew nothing whatever of the
progress of the battle as a whole. They did not know where their rocket
was, or whether it was going north, east, south, or west. They knew when
it was going up or down only by the "seats of their pants." They did not
even know the nature of the targets they destroyed, since upon their
plates all targets looked alike--small, bright, greenish-yellow spots.
Hence:

"Give us the dope, Pete, if we've got a minute to spare," Kinnison
begged of his Fire Control Officer. "You know more than we do--give!"

"It's coming in now," came the prompt reply. "Six of those targets that
did such fancy dodging were atomics, aimed at the Lines. Five were
dirigibles, with our number on 'em. You fellows did a swell job. Very
little of their stuff got through--not enough, they say, to do much
damage to a country as big as the U.S.A. On the other hand, they stopped
scarcely any of ours--the