Ships and guns exploded in the air as they wheeled around Ruuzol. Vast red flares sprang to life amid deafening detonations. Metal buckled and split. Powder charges sloughed upward and outward, carrying men and equipment with it in a crimson spray of destruction. The exploding magazines burst open the fliers, twisting and rending the metal hulls, ripping jagged holes, lifting off entire deck sections, sending men and railings into the air.
Crimson ruin rained on the red plains.
Ilse whimpered, watching.
Kortha swung the red lever back, panting harshly.
"There goes the Mars you built," sobbed Ilse.
"We can rebuild ships," said Kortha. "Some men will die, but not all, as would happen had I let the switch stay on a while longer. Those men will build and man new ships, for a new Mars. Had I left the switch on too long, not a living thing would exist between Ruuzol and those cliffs."
Kortha chuckled a little, seeing distress and surrender flags break from the masts of every ship in the vast flotilla. Even Guantra's flagship fluttered the white pennon.
"Send Guantra to us in unconditional surrender. Radio every flier that unless Guantra yields, we'll kill them all. We won't have to make good that pledge, though. The men and the commanders out there are limp with amazement, and fright of the unknown. They don't know what weapon we use. They thought themselves so secure from reprisal, you see. The unexpected will make cravens of them, for the moment. Oh, yes. And tell Guantra and his men to come unarmed. We in Ruuzol don't own a single gun."
Minutes later a tiny flier broke from the flagship and dropped toward the landing strips on the mesa. Kortha still had his hand on the red lever, watching every vessel that hung motionless in the air above the plain. But there was no fight in any of them. Kortha was right. The sudden destruction that had leaped from the very silence around them had sapped aggressiveness.