ntion to the screen again. That neighboring ship was
struggling desperately to escape, knowing she could not stand much more.

"What's the matter with that pilot?" Hanlon yelled. "Why don't he flip
her over and beat it?"

"Seems to be held by something," his father's anxious voice was tense.
"Have those others got some sort of tractor beam?"

"Tractors?" Hanlon looked up in surprise. "I've read about them, but
thought they were impossible."

"Impossible to us because we haven't got 'em yet," Newton said absently.
"They are theoretically possible."

Every beam from every Corps ship was piercing downward. Suddenly other
ships were appearing, and the young man realized that the light cruisers
were coming down to add their might to that of the battleships and
heavies.

Four of the light cruisers maneuvered swiftly below the battleship next
to the Sirius, one below the other, and in the instant of their
alignment the big ship broke free, while the others flashed away from
that restricting, holding tractor, or whatever it was.

It seemed like hours that Hanlon's eyes strained, trying to see what was
going on. They had slowed, his spaceman's sense told him, and now he
could see they were within the atmosphere, not too high above the
ground. Now he could make out huge, squat mechanisms from which those
deadly rays were pouring.

The Guddus, with their lack of knowledge of things mechanical, had not
reported these to Hanlon, else he could have warned Admiral Ferguson
about them, and the attack might possibly have been handled differently.

Suddenly a speaker blared, "Sector Two is in our hands. No total losses.
A number of the enemy scouts got away--they're far faster than anything
we've got."

A yell rose from every throat there in the control room.

Sector Two, Hanlon knew, was the spaceyard where the scouts and light
cruisers were being built. "They probably hadn't armed that field as
much as these others," he said to his father.

Newton nodded, then the two walked over to the High Admiral's station
and glanced into his larger bank of plates.

Now Hanlon could see clearly, and at first glance knew that none of the
new enemy ships below them were fighting--only those ground batteries
which encircled the shipyard. He could see that most of these were now
out of action, destroyed by the Federation ships. The others were under
terrific bombardment, not only from the ships' beams, but from their
bombs and guided mi