"It has gone. It is leaving for Jovian direction."
Datz told so. But he himself seemed not to understand completely what he had said. After a moment, they realize for the first time that the simple fact, the enemy which had attacked them a moment ago, finished to pass by and went away, had more significant meaning.
"It has gone..."
Johnson murmured absent-mindedly. Then wipe off the sweat from his forehead. "It made a blunder. It hadn't be able to shoot us although we had been still like a mark of firing and it has gone. But why on earth?"
The action Mizoguchi made at the last moment was very simple. He projected the missiles between the enemy and their cruiser and exploded them. Then jetted the engine nozzle to the ball of the exploded missile warheads' splinters.
"In a nutshell, it was a expansion of a smoke screen."
Mizoguchi said to the rest of them at last.
"The splinters of the missiles become infrared light sources over large range. I supposed that it must observe impact by monitoring of infrared ray. So, I laid down a smoke screen. It was gone because it had not be able to monitor the impact."
"We were saved by the skin of our teeth, weren't we? Lieutenant, if you missed the timing, we would have been shot before the missiles exploded, or shot after the splinters finished expanding. Only you can do it by manual with your hunch. We are saved."
"Yes, for this time."
Mizoguchi said severely.
"But for next time, they will develop much powerful laser cannons and higher sensitive sensors. They should also develop high performance engine and commit it to the battle field. When we have produced a automatic system which lay down a smoke screen, they would develop another system which overcome it.
The same thing is repeated... We will continue the same thing we have repeated for thousands years from now, also..."
But young two men didn't listen to what Mizoguchi said. They were analysing the data and heartily disputing over the performance of the enemy ship.