His consciousness absorbed the tearing wound inflicted by the alien enemy. It was like no wound on Earth—raw, crazy pain which started like a burn at his navel. He began to writhe in his chair.
Actually he had not yet had time to move a muscle when the Lady May struck back at their enemy.
Five evenly spaced photonuclear bombs blazed out across a hundred thousand miles.
The pain in his mind and body vanished.
He felt a moment of fierce, terrible, feral elation running through the mind of the Lady May as she finished her kill. It was always disappointing to the cats to find out that their enemies whom they sensed as gigantic space Rats disappeared at the moment of destruction.
Then he felt her hurt, the pain and the fear that swept over both of them as the battle, quicker than the movement of an eyelid, had come and gone. In the same instant, there came the sharp and acid twinge of planoform.
Once more the ship went skip.
He could hear Woodley thinking at him. "You don't have to bother much. This old son of a gun and I will take over for a while."
Twice again the twinge, the skip.