An hour later Bill entered the bridge-room.
Gazing through the vitrolite panels, he saw the familiar aspect of interplanetary space—hard, brilliant points of many-colored light scintillating in a silver-dusted void of utter blackness. The flaming, red-winged sun was small and far distant. Earth was a huge green star, glowing with indescribably beautiful liquid emerald brilliance; the moon a silver speck beside it.
The grim red disk of Mars filled a great space in the heavens. Bill looked for a little blue dot that had been visible upon the red planet for so long—the tiny azure circle that he had first seen from the telescope in Trainor's Tower. He found the spot where it should be, on the upper limb of the planet. But it was gone.
"The thing has left Mars," Captain Brand told him. "It has set out on its mission of doom to Earth!"
"What is it?"
"It is armored with one of their blue vibratory screens. What hellish contrivances of war it has in it, and what demoniac millions of Martians, no one knows. It is enormous, more than a mile in diameter."
"Can we do anything?"
"I hardly see how we can do anything. But we can try. Trainor and the Prince are coming with their vitomaton."
"Say, didn't they shoot their atomic bombs at the ship last night?" Bill asked. "It was out of sight, but I imagined they had wrecked it."
"One of the lookouts who was late getting back brought down one of their globes with a rocket. They fired a lot of the purple bombs to scare us. But I think they meant to take us alive. In the interest of their science, I suppose. And Dr. Trainor got the vitomaton ready before they had done anything."