"God," said Hawkins quietly. After a moment he threw open a communications switch that connected him to the Gunnery Officer. "Well, what's next?" he asked quietly.
Next came a huge ball of electricity that spat sparks as it hurtled through space and shattered itself into a million bolts of lightning at the very feet of the alien. The resulting burst of light was painful to the eyes, but when vision cleared, they saw the alien again, still standing erect and still waving.
They tried launching a dozen space torpedoes at once, filled with the highest chemical explosives known to man. They crashed in criss-cross fashion about the alien, ripping the very air asunder with their fantastic devastation. They left a crater almost a mile wide, and standing in the middle of it, still untouched, the enemy. Then the ship bombarded the small figure below with every wavelength known to man, still without effect.
Finally the Gunnery Officer called Hawkins on the intercom. "I'm sorry, Captain, but we did our best. I guess there's only one thing left to do."
"I guess you're right," Hawkins admitted reluctantly. And turning to his helmsman he said, "Take her up."
The Sunward was almost fifty miles from the alien when she unleashed her final weapon. She had dropped tattle-tale robots behind to feed her information both before and after the blast. And then she aimed the mightiest atomic weapon man had created straight at Lan Sur.
The very planet shook at its detonation, so powerful was the bomb. The fire and clouds rose miles into the sky, and the Sunward's delicate instruments indicated the presence of a radiation so intense that it was certain an area hundreds of miles in size was completely destroyed. It took several minutes before enough of the aftermath of the explosion had cleared away for them to find him, but they located the alien sitting calmly in a crater at the very center of the affected area, obviously still unharmed.
