The Sirius had stopped in midair and they could see, far in the distance, the tiny sphere of the Jovians, rushing to the attack.
"Oh, how horrible!" cried the girl, her voice breaking. "I'm afraid, Steve...."
"You needn't be, ace. I've told you they won't go off half-cocked as long as Westfall is on the job. They're ready for anything, or they wouldn't be here—but just the same I wish that they had that Titanian mirror and a couple of those bombs!"
In a moment more the Jovian plane of force was launched, the powerful ray-screens flared into white-hot, sparkling defense, and the battle was on. Held spell-bound as the castaways were by that spectacular duel, yet Stevens' trained mind warned him of the perils of their position.
"Grab your bow and we'll beat it!" and he rapidly led her away from the steel structures to an open hillside, well away from any projection, tree, or sharp point of rock. "If that keeps up very long, we're going to see some real fireworks, and I don't know whether there will be enough left of our plant here to salvage or not. Everything is grounded, of course, but I don't believe that ordinary grounds will amount to much against what's coming."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Nadia.
"Look!" he replied, pointing, and as he spoke, a terrific bolt of lightning launched itself from the incandescent screen of the Jovian vessel upon their slender ultra-radio tower, which subsided instantly into a confused mass of molten and twisted metal.
As the power of the beams was increased and as the combatants drew nearer and nearer the ground, the lightning display grew ever more violent. Well below the canyon as the warring vessels were, the power-plant and penstock did not suffer at all and only a few discharges struck the Forlorn Hope—discharges which were carried easily to ground by the enormous thickness of her armor—but every prominent object for hundreds of yards below the Hope was literally blasted out of existence. Radio tower, directors and fittings; trees, shrubs, sharp points of rock—all were struck again and again; fused, destroyed, utterly obliterated by the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those impregnable screens of force. Even almost flat upon the ground as the spectators were, each individual hair upon their heads strove fiercely to stand erect, so heavily charged was the very air. Stevens' arm was blue for days, such was Nadia's grip upon it, and she herself could scarcely breathe in that mighty arm's constriction—but each was conscious only of that incredibly violent struggle, of that duel to the death being waged there before their eyes with those frightful weapons, hitherto unknown to man. They saw the Sirius triumphant, and Stevens led the dancing girl back into their dwelling of steel.
"Danger's all over now. Radio's gone, but we should fret a lot about that. It has done its stuff—we can use the communicators. And now, sweetheart, I'm going to kiss you—for the first time in seven lifetimes."
Locked in each other's arms, they watched the scene until Stevens thought it time to send his message. Then, running hand in hand toward the huge space-cruiser, they were snatched apart and drawn up toward the double airlocks of the main entrance. Pressure gradually brought up to normal, they were ushered into the control room, where Nadia glanced around quickly and almost took her father off his feet by her tempestuous rush into his arms.