Frederix fired first—right into that glassite helmet—red burst of flame, blood spurting out of a jugular vein severed from nothingness; the Vron's decapitated body crumpled.
But the lock crashed shut, and a man loomed within a lighted gun turret.
The atomics were hissing more loudly now, the intense wave of heat driving Frederix back. A leader flashed past him, fabricating an ionized path for the incredible bolt of lightning which crashed nearby, sucking him into the very heart of a stunning thunderclap.
He regained his feet unsteadily, tried to run on, intent on escaping the roaring atomics ere they blasted him with their dispersed fury.
He stumbled, went down, and his mad eyes saw the outdistanced robot coming towards him. A lightning leader flashed, smiting the metallic automaton squarely in the fuel compartment—the radium compartment—fusing the whole into a blinding, white hot, leaping electrical aura which strung itself out in a roaring, seething, zigzagging finger which leaped backwards along that ionized pathway towards the ship!
In a glory of pyrotechnic thunder the ship was off—but in seeking revenge the captain made one mistake!
A tiny voice keened above that mad tumult, shrilling out of that gutted, wrecked automaton: