"Hummock—humm—Good Lord!"
The hummock, dome of Scyth's spacecraft, began to rise out of the sea. Yard after yard it rose, coming upward glistening wet, the sea water running down in rivulets along its sleek flank. Ponderously and inexorably it rose with a steadiness of living rock. Yet it carried the air of feather-lightness, of an untold monster of sheer power held in easy leash. This was no rocket, straining against the formidable pull of gravity; this was a thing above material forces, its engines idling, its control in complete command. Without a second glimpse it was no spacecraft of Earth.
Up out of the sea it rose until its hundred yards towered above them. The spacelock was just above the waterline when the rising stopped and the alien spacecraft stopped, rock-steady. It was poised on its inexplicable driving forces with the same confident ease that an elevator shows when poised on its cables at the twentieth floor of a building. It stood rock-still and let the ocean waves break against its sleek, polished metal flank.
Whatever it was, Dusty did not like it.
He kicked the auxiliary engine into life, loosed the halyards and let the sails drop. He turned the helm hard as the engine roared into full throat. But the schooner defied its helm and aimed bowsprit-on to the spacelock of the spacecraft, starting through the sea like a dolphin toward the ship of space. The engine raced without bite because the ship was being hauled forward by some unknown force faster than the screw could drive it; the helm shuddered but had no effect, it tried to slue the stern sidewise but only succeeded in making the hull strain out of line. The wheel whipped out of Dusty's hand and spun to dead-ahead.
Dusty left the helm and dived into the cabin. He flipped on his radio and waited with rising panic while the tubes warmed and the meter rose to the red line that meant that it was ripe and ready for use. He grabbed the microphone, flipped the bandswitch to the Coast Guard Frequency, and yelled:
"This is Dusty Britton of the schooner Buccaneer. We are about a hundred miles off the coast of Baja California. Help! We are attacked by an alien spacecraft! Help! This is—"
He let his voice trail off because the output meter dropped abruptly to zero. Something had gone kaput.