"We'll do it," was the confident reply, "—or I will. Now we'll go back to the Consolidated Electric; they will have the Sorenson disintegrator ready. I'll put it in your machine and—"
"And what?" broke in the pilot. "Is this some new death ray? We've been hearing about them for years—just hearing about them. If that's what you mean, then your idea is all wet; it's worse than mine. I'm going up."
Perhaps the younger man saw something of the wild impatience in Danny's deep-sunk eyes. He laid a restraining hand on the pilot's arm while he explained:
"No death ray, Danny—that will come later; we haven't got it now. But we've got the disintegration of matter—the splitting of the atom, on something bigger than a laboratory scale. Sorenson did it. There is a flood of electrical energy poured out—streams of electrons—negative electricity. It leaves a positive charge that is tremendous if it isn't neutralized.
"I said that devilish white thing was like a thunder-cloud; well, I'll make your ship like the earth; then I'll bring them near each other—no need to ram him—and it will be like the hammer of Thor—"
The Infant's words ended in a crackling roar from above. Danny O'Rourke found his whole body tingling as if he were filled with stinging sparks; each single fiber of each muscle was twitching.
A blue light shone eerily overhead. He bent his stiffened, jerking neck till he could look—till he could see, with eyes that were filled with flashing fires of their own, other ripping blue flashes from the ends of outstanding wires, and above him a thousand feet, the belly of a white ship.
And through the brain-hammering clatter of the static discharge he heard the voice of the Infant, whose words came jerkily between the shudders that shook him:
"He doesn't dare, damn him! Can't let the wires touch us. Has to—discharge—in air.... But he'll burn us—afterwards!"