"Me, too," said Bull Mike.
"That settles it," said Yaxa. "We'll get along together, I'm sure."
"Senator W. L. Marcy of our United States once said, 'To the victors belong the spoils,'" continued Sukune. "We'll admit for the time being that you are victors and we're the spoils. Until the situation reverses itself we'll be model prisoners."
They gathered in friendly fashion around the television screen and dialed in the image of the asteroid. It appeared half light, half dark, like a moon at the half. They could pick out the roughnesses of mountains, ravines and plains, all made in miniature by clever Martian artisans. They discussed what they saw like real comrades, all enmity apparently forgotten.
When two days had passed they watched the diminishing Earth by television and, sure enough, sighted great clouds of shining specks—the hundreds of flights of space-ships that were taking the ether. They saw how some flew slowly, others swiftly, so that in a short time they had formed into the conventional "curtain front"—an open order formation of three dimensions, roughly disk-like in shape and perpendicular to the line of advance. It was about a thousand miles in diameter and about as thick through as the distance in which three or four ships could fly in single column. Against the black sky it looked like a moving galaxy of runaway stars.
In front of this formation danced several flights of speedy scouts. "Raws and the boys are among those," said Sukune.
"Don't the Martians inside the asteroid see that attacking force?" asked Bull Mike. "They can fly away, can't they? Well, why don't they?"
"A body of that size could hardly carry enough fuel for a long, sustained trip," Yaxa explained. "It just boosts itself along occasionally as it follows the orbit to which it is held by the sun's gravitational pull. That being the case, it could hardly hope to escape from those lighter, further-traveling ships. My companions inside doubtless figure that they might as well face the attack first as last."
There was something uncanny in the thought of what was being done and decided inside that floating globe, so like a lifeless planetoid and yet the work of mortal hands. Brimful of men and weapons it was destined to destroy whatever of Earth it might.
A month passed. And then another week. Larger and ever larger grew the mock asteroid until it filled a sizeable portion of the television screen that reflected it. At last they swooped down toward it, a great uneven globe the color of clay that spun slowly upon its tilted axis. Lightly as a falling leaf the ship descended. Neil was at the controls inside, while Yaxa sent code messages by radio. A great black opening suddenly appeared. Into this the craft slipped.