"Let 'em have their fun," Haller grinned. "There's not enough juice in their guns to melt the steel, and as long as we keep away from the outer walls, we don't get burned! Right now the one thing that interests me is a sandwich and...."
"Cap'n!" Old Barger rattled down the companionway steps, his face gray. "Big guns! Look!"
Steve whirled, glanced through one of the ports. From a wrecked space-cruiser about half a mile away the sub-men were laboriously dragging a gleaming mass of copper and glass tubes. A heavy heat-gun, designed to destroy armored warships. The little Lodestar could have no chance of withstanding its blast. Bestial ape-like figures were setting it up to cover the vessel's bow, while another group were dragging a second heavy projector around to play upon the stern.
"Sixteen-power projectors!" Fay whispered. "Oh, Steve, isn't there anything we can do? To have come through so much ... and now...."
Haller was silent, and his face took on the old living robot look. No escape! If only the dragging magnetism didn't hold them down! It would have been so simple to open the rockets, leap skyward. But the invisible field held them like a vise, as it had held so many helpless vessels on this Island of Lost Spaceships, never to leave!
A roar from the sub-men sounded outside. Beams of dazzling blue light had burst from the two projectors, had caught the ship in their focus, until it was like a bit of steel in the middle of a spark-gap. Heat ... searing, unbearable heat, swept the cabin.
"They're turning on the juice slowly," Barger muttered through clenched teeth. "Full power would blast the ship to atoms, but they're trying to force us to surrender! They don't want to destroy the food we got aboard!"
Haller nodded grimly. The heat within the cabin was becoming unbearable now, and the walls were beginning to turn a dull red. He shot a glance at Fay; paper-white, face drawn, the girl was gasping for breath. The veins in old Barger's neck were beginning to stand out apoplectically.
"Lie down!" Haller whispered. "Cooler ... on floor!"