Spaceman Lost by George O. Smith — Read

As Commodore Theodore Wilson eyed the infrawave detector presentation on the dome of the detector ship, he groaned. The presentation of targets was stronger now. At the apex of the dome was the lifeship, its response waxing and waning, but always strong enough to stay visible even at its lowest ebb.

Some forty or fifty degrees down the hemisphere was the stronger response of the enemy warcraft, hanging motionless in the dome. The group of spacecraft that had come with it were dispersed in some complicated pattern. Most of these were lost in the tricky shift of the spurious lighting of the dome. Others had disappeared completely because they were out of range.