"But it was rather brutal, Lenox, wasn't it?"
"When you are dealing with brutes, little woman, it is sometimes necessary to be brutal."
"And you look a wee bit brutal right now," she replied, looking up at him with something like a look of fear in her eyes. "I suppose that is because you have just killed somebody—or somethings—whichever they are."
"Do I, really?"
The hard-set jaw relaxed and his lips melted into a smile under his moustache, and he bent down and kissed her.
"Well, what do you suppose I should have thought of them if you had had a whiff of that poison?"
"Yes, dear," she whispered in between the kisses, "I see now."
CHAPTER XI
The Astronef dropped swiftly down through the crimson-tinged clouds, and a few minutes later they saw that the rest of the fleet had scattered in units in all directions, apparently with the intention of getting as far as possible out of reach of that terrible ram. Only one of them, the largest, which carried what looked like a flag of woven gold at the top of its centre mast, remained in sight after a few minutes. It was almost immediately below them when they had passed through the clouds, and they could see it sinking straight down towards the centre of what appeared to be the principal square of the bigger of the two cities which Zaidie had named New York and Brooklyn.