"Stand still!" said Danny through stiffened lips. "Don't make a move! He hasn't seen us, it may be!"
The crackling discharge had ceased; the rain of miniature lightning bolts that had shot around them and through them had ended. The cable had gone up before their eyes and hidden itself in the white ship. The pilot's eyes clung to that white-bellied thing, so slender and round and gleaming against the dark clouds overhead; he saw it hang motionless for long minutes while it seemed that the breath in his throat must choke him. Then he saw that white roundness enlarge as the ship settled swiftly down.
It hung in another moment directly above their red ship. Danny saw three round holes open in the white shell—the three outlets that the Infant had predicted. It had descended noiselessly, but now there came from within a high-pitched whining hum. The dreaded heat and ray! They were about to see their own ship destroyed! And, as for themselves—! Danny was still waiting for the first, devastating blast of intolerable heat, when the ship settled softly down.
Green port-holes stared at him like eyes. A door was outlined with a line of black that spread to a round opening as a door swung wide. A huge door in the side of a huge ship, but it was none too large for the giant figure that crept through.
And Danny O'Rourke stared wordlessly at the flat-nosed face above a robe of chilled steel blue.
"'Tis him!" he gasped out that the Infant might hear. "The same one—the devil I saw in Stobolsk!" And if any other identification were needed it came in the slender rod, whose heavy metal butt was gripped in the giant's hand. At sight of the wire looping back from the weapon; at remembrance of the Infant's shrewd guess; and with the conviction that now this same weapon was to annihilate the only two men who knew how to combat this destroyer, Danny threw back his head and laughed—until his harsh laughter died away in a snarl of rage.
"Go on and do it," he heard, "you ugly devil. You killed those Reds; you've killed thousands of us since, you murderin' beast! Go on and kill us, too!"
The slender tube was aimed at him squarely. Danny waited to hear the faint click that would mean his death as the invisible ray sawed into his body. Instead the huge figure leaned down to stare at the pilot; then straightened while a crooked smile of recognition appeared on the deformed face.... And the slender rod moved on—on—in a slow circle toward the other waiting man!
It clicked before it reached him. Danny heard it, and "No—no!" he screamed in a horrible voice. "Run, Infant! Beat it, for God's sake!"