He dove upon one of the crawling winged enemy ships. The gun chattered briefly, and smoke and flames curled back from the doomed plane's engine. One!
Another airplane climbed clumsily up to meet this wingless metal arrow. His sights centered on the target. Abruptly the enemy ship was gone, whiffed away by the terrific invisible rays of the space cruiser's atomic batteries. Thig frowned. These Orthans!
Thig climbed. The remaining Jap ship did not attempt escape. Instead it dove straight upon its target. Down it went screaming, its wings ripping away from the fuselage with the battering of the air at this terrific speed, even as the atomic cannons blasted again and again. The space ship's guns handled awkwardly on the ground.
Suddenly, the airplane disintegrated as an atomic bolt hit it squarely. The space ship ceased firing, and Thig slipped his ship back to earth. He clicked open his transmitter.
"You will be destroyed before we return to Ortha," said Urol. "We cannot permit one of the Horde to live whose body and brain differ from the rest of us."
"That is right," agreed Thig. "I should have killed myself before you came." He paused. "I should not have tried to warn you."
"You are wrong again," Urol told him. "This madness destroys your reason. You were right in living until we came, to warn us. Now we can warn the Horde that 72-P-3 will be unsafe for colonization for many years."