The missile absorbed the energy.
Its nose melted and its homing circuits mingled with the flare of the Lancaster's drive; then there was a minute puff as the missile was consumed before its atomics could be joined in fission.
Farradyne cut the drive and took a deep breath; but his relief didn't last long. Terra was before him, a monstrous blue-green globe just to one side—close—close—
Beyond, the enemy ship was waiting.
The thin scream of atmosphere cried at their ears and there came a braking pressure that threw them against their seat straps. The accelerometer went crazy, reaching for the peg-stop on the left.
The blood rushed to their heads and Farradyne fought the pressure that tried to raise his arms.
Then the screaming stopped as the Lancaster passed beyond the atmosphere into space again. Farradyne hit the drive hard again.
But if the enemy was expecting him to come past on a line-course, they were wrong. The touch of the upper air, thin as it was, had deflected the Lancaster's course into a long ellipse and hurled the ship far to one side of the expected line of flight. The course wound out and around and back and plunged the ship into the upper air again. Terra rotated madly below and then dropped beneath the level of the edge of the control room dome as the Lancaster speared out into space once more. Again they went out and around and down into the upper air, and this time they went around in a tight ellipse with the air screaming at them all the way. Four times around Terra they went, and then Farradyne turned the tail of the Lancaster straight down and started to drop like a plummet.
He was kept busy checking the controls and the autopilot and the computing radar altimeter as he aimed the Lancaster for the southern edge of Lake Superior; they came down in a screaming fall like a meteorite.
The flare parted the waters of the lake and sent up a billow of steam for about a hundredth of a second. Then the autopilot cut the drive and the violence ceased as the Lancaster sank into the deep cool waters, to stop, to come rising buoyantly towards the surface again.