The entire afternoon the radio had been bringing constant reports of the progress of the Martians. As they were doing no damage now, and were over a densely populated district, where any battle such as would result should the "Terrestrian" attack them would surely destroy a considerable amount of valuable property, Waterson decided to wait till they had left California. To the west was the ocean, and a conflict there would do no damage. To the east was the desert, and to the south was the sparsely settled regions of low property value. Only to the north would the value of the property be prohibitive to a final encounter.
When, at about five, news came that the Martians were returning to the desert landing spot in Nevada, Waterson at once set out to intercept them, and as his tiny car was prepared and waiting, the Martian armada came in sight, at first mere glistening points far off across the purple desert hills, but approaching hundreds of miles an hour.
Yet it seemed hours while those glowing points neared, grew and became giant ships, though still miles away. When at last the leader of the Martian fleet came within about a half mile of its tiny opponent, without slowing its rapid flight, there sprang from its nose a glowing violet beam that reached out like a glowing finger of death to touch the machine ahead. But that machine was strongly charged with a tremendous negative potential, and the cathode ray was deflected and passed harmless, far to one side.
... but three great hulks dived, and in a dive that ended in flaming wreckage on the packed sands, ten miles below.
And now the "Terrestrian" went into action, retreating before the bull-like rush of its mighty opponents. The twenty great ships were drawn up in a perfect line formation, a semicircle, that each might be able to use its weapons with the greatest effect without interfering with its neighbor. Now from the gleaming ship ahead there sprang out a dull red beam, a beam that reached out to touch and caress the advancing ships. Six mighty ships it touched, and those six mighty ships continued their bull rush without control, spreading consternation in the ordered rank, for in each the pilot room had instantly become a mass of flame and glowing metal under the influence of the heat ray. The other fourteen ships had swerved at once, diving wildly lest that beam of red death reach them, but three great hulks dived, and in a dive that ended in flaming wreckage on the packed sands, ten miles below. The other three ships that had felt that deadly ray regained control before touching the earth, but those three that went down, mighty cathode rays streaming, struck and formed great craters in the sand.
But again that ray of death stabbed out, for one Martian had incautiously exposed his control room, and in an instant it too was diving. The mighty ray tubes forcing it on, it plunged headlong, with ever greater velocity to the packed sands below. An instant later there was a titanic concussion, an explosion that made the mighty Martians rock, and stagger drunkenly as the blast of air rushed up, and a great crater, a full half mile across, yawned in the earth's surface. Every atomic bomb in that ship had gone off!