"Looks like they want to get us in the middle and pop us from all directions at once," observed Sherman. "Well, here goes. Pick the end of the line; that's our best chance. How's your potential, Gloria?"
"O. K., chief," she answered. "Lightning this time?"
He nodded. The rockets of the Monitor II roared; its prow dipped forward, and at an incredible speed it swept down on the line of Lassan warships, followed by the rest of the American fleet. But it was no surprise this time. As the monitors plunged in, from every green globe that could bring them to bear, the long yellow rays shot forth. Right through them the Monitor II plunged; the grate of it, even through their double coating of armor and the vacuum chambers, set their teeth on edge; then the rocket-ship was pointing directly down at one of the Lassans and Gloria snapped the key that released the artificial lightning.
A jagged beam of flame, intenser than the hottest furnace, leaped through the air, struck the green globe, and sought the earth in a thousand tiny rivulets of light. For just a second the globe seemed unharmed; then slowly, and almost majestically, it began to dissolve in mid-air, spouting flames at every pore. Fully ten miles down and beyond, the Monitor turned again, and not till then did the sound of the explosion reach them, a terrific, rending thunder-clap.
"See that?" cried Sherman. "That formation of theirs isn't so dumb. They've got it all ranged out; none of our ships can get at them without coming through at least one of those yellow rays, and if we stay in them too long—blooie!"
They peered through the windows at the formation. Off at one side, they could make out the forms of two more rocket-ships, outlined against the sky, while behind and above them pursued by the searching yellow beams, came the rest. As they turned, they saw the gravity-beam shoot from one of the American ships, crumple uselessly against a green globe. Then they plunged in, again, firing the gravity beam earthward to work up the potential for another lightning discharge.
The hills below rocked and roared to the repeated shock. Trees fell in crashing ruin as lightning-bolt or infra-sound shivered them to bits; great cars of burned earth and molten rock marked the spots where the gravity-beam struck the ground. All round was a maze of yellow rays, lightning flashes, and green globes that reeled, rose, fell, sometimes blowing up, sometimes giving ground, but always fighting back sternly and vigorously and always rising through the clear spring evening.
Murray Lee, at the rear of the ship, was the only one to see an American rocket-ship, caught and held for a few fatal moments by two yellow rays, slowly divest itself of its outer armor, then of its inner, and go whirling to the earth, dissolved into its ultimate fragments by those irresistible pennons of sound.
Gloria Rutherford at the prow was the only one to see another caught bow-on in a yellow ray, reply by firing its gravity-beam right down the ray and into the green globe through the port from which the ray had issued. The ray went out—a spreading spot of flame appeared at the port and the great green globe crumpled into a little ball of flame before her eyes. But such events as these were the merest flashes in the close-locked combat. For the most part they had time to do nothing but handle the controls, throw switches to and fro, shoot forth gravity-beam and lightning-flash in endless alternation at the Lassan ships of which there always appeared to be one more right before them as Sherman twisted and turned the Monitor with a skill that was almost uncanny.