1930: Black Star Passes , en novella av John W. Campbell, Jr. i hans Arcot, Morey och Wade serien , först publicerad i Fantastiska historier kvartalsvis , fall 1930 , tillgänglig på Internetarkiv . ( Project Gutenberg etext av Black Star Passes är värdelös för våra ändamål, som det var transkriberad från 1965 Ace-utgåvan , som inte är identisk med den ursprungliga 1930-tidningen.)
Jordens forskare förbereder sig för att slåss med invadersna från Black Star:
"The ships must be capable of about six or seven thousand miles a second, and that implies all the acceleration a human being can endure. Since I expect to make long trips in them, I think we will do best if we make several types of ships. Three should suffice: a small single man cruiser, with no bunk or living quarters, just a little power plant and weapon. One that can jump out of the way of a ray so quickly that it will be very hard to hit, and at the same time, because of its ray, be very dangerous. There will have to be some place for the operator of this ship to sleep and eat. I think the easiest way to solve that is to have a large fleet of mother ships — ships with a twenty-man crew, but still very active, and very deadly. These should have bunks and living quarters for the crew. Some men would be sleeping in the bunks all the time. The men could take turns running the one-man ships and sleeping. There will also be some ten-man scout cruisers. These will be used in the same way, but will have a smaller fleet of ships dependent on them.
[. . . .]
Each of the little ships, the one-man machines, was equipped with a small machine-gun shooting luminous paint bullets. One of these bullets, landing on a machine, made it visible for at least two hours, and as they would cover an area of perhaps thirty square feet, they were decidedly effective.
Utlänningar har sina egna moderskipor och fighters:
And thus that great courtyard had been filled with Giants of Space! And in each of these thousand great warships there nestled three thousand tiny one-man ships. A thousand five hundred miles the great metal bulks alone would stretch, and with them would go a great swarm of tiny stinging ships, like some horde of stinging wasps swarming about their nest.
