"Maybe you'd better fire a shot into the surface before you try landing, Strike," Ivy suggested.
"Why?"
"Just a hunch." Her voice sounded worried.
"Okay, Ivy," Strike replied. "Cob, take a pot shot at it will you. You should be able to hit it from here ... it's twenty miles wide."
Cob was disgusted. "And me the best shot in my class back at the Academy!" He drew his spring-gun and snapped a solid steel slug at the looming worldlet....
What happened next, they never knew exactly. On the dark surface of the planetoid a blazing bubble of white incandescence appeared, expanding within split seconds to all but obscure the whole bulk of the disk. It churned and whirled and flashed, mushrooming out in a hellish coruscation of destruction. The blaze of light outlined the two men and the ship and the planetoids within a fifty mile circle and the expanding shock wave fanned out. It struck the two space armored men to send them spinning wildly. The glowing bulk of the monitor reeled and bucked. Strike felt himself whipping up and down at the end of the cable that bound him to Cob Whitley. He felt himself being buffeted and burned by the dazzling flare of atomic fire. The merciful blackness spread itself like a curtain over his tortured eyes....