They turned north, giving the Lassans time to assemble their fleet. "What's the arrangement?" asked Gloria. "Do we all go for them at once?"
"No. We dive in first and the rest follow behind, pulling up before they get in range. If anything happens to us, they'll rescue us—if they can. You see we don't know what they've got any more than they know what we've got, and I thought it would be a good idea to try the first attack with only one ship. In a pinch the rest can get away—if the Lassans haven't developed a lot of speed on those green eggs of theirs."
"How many now?" asked Sherman, from the controls, as the squadron swung back southward and the scarred mountain swam over the horizon again.
"Two—five—nine—eleven—oh, I can't count them all," said Gloria, "they keep changing formation so. There's a lot of them and they're coming up toward us, but slowly. They haven't got that blue beam at the base any more, either—you know the one that globe we got after was riding on."
As they approached it was indeed evident that the green globes were rising slowly through the twilight in some kind of loose formation. It was too complex for the American observers to follow in the brief glimpses they were vouchsafed as they swept past at hurricane speed. There seemed to be dozens of the Lassan globes; as though they expected to overwhelm opposition by mere force of numbers. Nearer and nearer came the rocket-ships, nearer and nearer loomed the sinister Lassan globes, betraying no signs of life, silent and ominous.
"Go?" called Sherman from his seat at the controls.
"Go!" said Ben.
The Monitor II dived; and as she dived, Gloria Rutherford switched on the deadly beam of the searchlight which would carry the gravity-beam against their enemies. For a moment it sought the green globes; then caught one fairly. Ben Ruby threw the switch; and down the light beam leaped the terrible stream of the broken atoms like a wave of death. Leaped—and failed!
For as it struck the green globe, instead of the rending explosion and the succeeding collapse, there came only a bright handful of stars, a coruscating display of white fire that dashed itself around the Lassan ship like foam on some coast-rock. It reeled backward, driven from its position under the tremendous shock of the sundered atoms, but it remained intact.