Fletcher Pratt

“ A projecting cliff stood just beneath them, sharply outlined in the rays of the morning sun.
“Now this is going to be difficult,” warned Sherman. “Throw that connecting bar, Ben. It holds the power switch and the beam switch together so they're both turned on at once. Otherwise the recoil we'd get on this end of the beam would tumble us over backward. Hold it, while I set the controls. We've got to take a jump as soon as we fire, or we'll pop right into the mess we make... Ready? All right, Gloria, go ahead with your searchlight.” ”

“ Those Lassans are no bums as electricians and after we've been at them once or twice, they'll be able to pick up our radiation whenever we're coming and duck us.”
“There's another thing,” said Ben. “I thought the Monitor vibrated a good deal when you let that shot go.”
“It did. We'll have to get more rigidity or we'll be shaking ourselves to pieces every time we shoot. But this, as I said, is an experimental ship. What we've got to do now is turn in and build a real one, with heavy armor and a lot of new tricks.” ”

“ Steel will keep out any kind of material projectiles they're likely to have, if it's thick enough. It won't keep out the light-ray, but we'll put on a thin lead plating to take care of that, just in case, though I don't think they're likely to try it after the one failure.
“Then inside the steel armor, we'll put a vacuum chamber. That will stop anything but light and maybe cosmic radiation, and I don't think they're up to that, although we'll get a little of the effect through the struts that support the outer wall of the chamber. ”

“ What I would like though, is a couple of these Lassan thought-helmets. Not that you people are slow on the uptake, but we'd be a lot faster if we had them, and we're going to need all the speed we can get. ”