Two hours later the nine sunships were drawn up in the form of a great half circle, closing swiftly on the blue globe, which had been calculated to be about one hundred feet in diameter. The sunships were nearly a thousand miles from the globe, and scattered along a curved line two thousand miles in length. Captain Brand gave orders for eight forward tubes on each flier to be made ready for use as weapons. From his own ship he flashed a heliographic signal.
"The Fury, of the Moon Patrol, demands that you show ship's papers, identification tags for all passengers, and submit to search for contraband."
The message was three times repeated, but no reply came from the azure globe. It continued on its course. The slender white sunships came plunging swiftly toward it, until the crescent they formed was not two hundred miles between the points, the blue globe not a hundred miles from the war-fliers.
Then Bill, with his eye at a telescope, saw a little spark of purple light appear beside the blue globe. A tiny, bright point of violet-red fire, with a white line running from it, back to the center of the sphere. The purple spark grew, the white line lengthened. Abruptly, the newspaperman realized that the purple was an object hurtling toward him with incredible speed.
Even as the realization burst upon him, the spark became visible as a little red-blue sphere, brightly luminous. A white beam shone behind it, seemed to push it with ever-increasing velocity. The purple globe shot past, vanished. The white ray snapped out.
"A weapon!" he exclaimed.
"A weapon and a warning!" said Brand, still peering through another eyepiece. "And we reply!"
"Heliograph!" he shouted into a speaking tube. "Each ship will open with one forward tube, operating one second twelve times per minute. Increase power of rear tubes to compensate repulsion."
White shields flickered. Blindingly brilliant rays, straight bars of dazzling opalescence, burst intermittently from each of the nine ships, striking across a hundred miles of space to batter the blue globe with a hail of charged atoms.