Adventures in the Far Future & Tales of Outer Space — page 289: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

We’re going to join the Grand Fleet. You heard her, Daryesh. She’s making a triumphal pilgrimage to the gathered pouter of Janya, bringing the invincible weapons of Vwyrdda to her admiral. All right, all right, Laird. But take it easy. We have to get the energy devices installed first. We’ll have to give them enough of a demonstration to allay their suspicions. Joana’s the only one aboard here who trusts us. None of her officers do. The body and the double mind labored as the slow days passed, directing Janyard technicians who could not understand what it was they built. Laird, drawing on Daryesh’s memories, Knew what a giant slept in those coils and tubes and invisible energy-fields. Here were forces to trigger the great creative powers of the universe and turn them to destruction: distorted space-time, atoms dissolving into pure energy, vibrations to upset the stability of force- fields which maintained order in the cosmos. Laird remembered the ruin of Vwyrdda, and shuddered. They got a projector mounted and operating, and Daryesh suggested that the cruiser halt somewhere that he could prove his words. They picked a barren planet in an uninhabited system and lay in an orbit fifty thousand miles out. In an hour Daryesh had turned the facing hemisphere into a sea of lava. “If the dis-fields were going,” he said absent-mindedly, “I'd pull the planet into chunks for you.” Laird saw the pale taut faces around him. Sweat was shining on foreheads, and a couple of men looked sick. “Nothing they have can stop us,” murmured an officer dazedly. “Why, this one ship, protected by one of those Space- warp screens you spoke of, sir—this one little ship could sail in and lay the Solar System waste.” CORniclooo SS (SO)