In the meantime the more warlike forces of the Dauntless had not been idle. In the instant of the opening of the cavern’s doors Captain Craig erupted orders, and as soon as the Lyranian was out of the line of fire, keen-eyed needle-ray men saw to it that those doors were in no mechanical condition to close. The Dauntless settled downward; landed in front of the entrance to the cavern. The rocky, broken terrain meant nothing to her; the hardest, jaggedest boulders crumbled instantly to dust as her enormous mass drove the file-hard, inflexible armor of her midzone deep into the ground. Then, while alert beamers watched the entrance and while spy-ray experts combed the interior for other openings which Kinnison and Worsel were already practically certain did not exist, the forces of Civilizat
