Nelson looked at Androka, his cheeks ghastly. "What ... what happened?"
"The rays must have struck some electric cable carrying tremendous power—more powerful than any cable to be found on shipboard," the inventor explained, in a husky voice. "That would put so heavy a power load on it that the rays were no longer capable of short-circuiting it to extinction. They carried the overload back to us and burned out our generator."
"But that little plane," Nelson argued. "It couldn't—"
Androka shrugged his narrow shoulders and ran his fingers nervously through his gray beard. "There must be some other vessel near at hand—with power cables such as I have described."
Nelson cursed savagely and tore out of the room. He raced up the ladder to the bridge, tugged at Herr Kommander Brandt's sleeve.
"That fool Androka's rays have failed. They've short-circuited themselves. We've got to shoot down Curtis—that helicopter—with our antiaircraft guns!"
"Better have Androka release the radio and tell the others what we're doing," Brandt advised.
In the next few minutes, the radio silence was lifted long enough to let Nelson tell the rest of the convoy that an enemy plane was hovering over the Comerford.
Then a blast from the antiaircraft batteries of the cruiser screamed into the sky. Other armed vessels in the convoy cut loose with a fierce barrage.
A few minutes of bedlam. Then the firing ceased.