force screen n.

But, they attacked in such numbers that fully half the fleet was destroyed by their explosions before the induction beam fleet arrived. These beams were, to our amazement, quite useless, being instantly absorbed by a force-screen, and the remaining ships sailed on undisturbed, our torpedoes being exhausted.

The blast tubes in his hands were trained on me, but I knew I'd be safe enough and that Helen Torrey and Miles would remain unscathed. The refracting belts had built up an invisible force-screen about them.

This fussed him so that he shut off the force screens and would have carried Ole Doc straight back into the ship for a take-off had not his revered master been staring so hard, pipe again forgotten.

Later, he found a dry cave in the hill on which his objective stood. It took him two days of careful, cautious raying to square its walls, ceiling and floor, plus half a day with a powered fan driving out silicate dust. After that, he stowed his supplies at the back, parked the sled near the front, set up a curtaining force-screen across the entrance. The hole in the hill was now home.

Soon the Wersgorix landed many ships in a circular formation… to form a cap walled by the eerie faint shimmer of a force screen, picketed by mobile bombards, and roofed by hovering warcraft.

From within the starship human senses could not detect the instantaneous absence of the force screens that had enfolded her, that had deflected and absorbed electromagnetic energy.

Something just dropped the building’s force screen.

It was unsettling because of the flicker of a Personal Area Force-screen—the PAF set up in the anticipated direction of attack.