Fire ceased briefly, and both sides waited for the veil to clear. Technicians put the cancel plugs on ruined targets to clear them from further destruction, and turretmen served the heating projectors.
A wave of sub-ships zoomed in and spread flaming death among the Terran forces, and the energy bombs poured up, and among the barrier-protected ships. A group of Martians holding disperser screens zoomed over, spreading energy in wide-aperture releases from their turrets. Bombs and torpedoes raced in through the disperser screens, and the blind crews died without knowing whether they had hit anything. Terran sub-ships crossed beneath the first wave of Martians, and hit the enemy. A veritable fence of exploding ships barred the view as sub-ships collided. Their indetectability was mutual, too.
Like twin tornadoes, the ships of both worlds spun upwards in a vast, whirling spiral. Bits of dust, smoke, and vapor intermingled with the ships, giving them a definitely tornadolike appearance as they swept the surface of Mephisto towards each other.
The volume between the twin vortices was torn and blasted. Slowly and ponderously they moved together, and as they intermingled in a whirling eddy of battle, the ground of Mephisto was scoured clean of life.
The weight of Terra's forces carried the most momentum, and the spout moved across the territory formerly held by Mars.
Reinforcements swooped in from space, and the whirling mass expanded. And with gathering speed, the vortex moved in an irregular path across Mephisto, sterilizing the planet as it went. Mephistans went before the tornado of huge battlecraft as straws go before a hurricane.
The path of the storm was strewn with smoking, ruined ships. The luckless were forced inside of the whirling cylinder and gunned there. They fell down that chimney of death to the ground that awaited them at the bottom, or crashed against uprising sub-ships that swooped upward through the vortex and fired on all sides, relying on the identifier-couplers that stopped their aim against their fellows.
The vortex broke, and the Terran ships opened from circle to crescent to straight line to closing crescent and strove to encircle the Martians. Outnumbered now, the latter fled slowly and kept up a killing fire of retreat.
Across the face of Mephisto arrowed the embattled fleets. A wall ten miles high and fifty miles long and thirty miles from front to back accelerated and swept everything before it. Between the two walls of fighting ships was a constant flare of death. Cities caught in the conflagration died; their buildings seared, blasted, and broken.