The three closest ones caught the black blast full. It burned through their insulating shields, as it had burned the platforms. One boat sank like a stone. Another up-ended; the third tried to retreat.
But its animals evidently were caught at the water surface and destroyed. It lay there, its needle-beam wavering. Then it, also, was hit full by the black beam. It shriveled, disappeared. The water down there was gruesome with black struggling figures.
The beam swung after our other seven boats. They were headed to attack the rafts. They felt the beam but they were farther away, and their side insulation withstood it. I roared orders at them, and by some miracle my voice got through. Alice answered me.
“Head back!” I commanded. “Around the island. Into the east channel.”
It was all very swift. I had been fairly high and about a mile away when the black beam began its deadly work. It flashed by me several times, but my lone platform, with its six birds, was a small, inconspicuous object. The beam missed me; its handlers were evidently after bigger game.
In my ear Maxite’s voice sounded, “Keep the girls away, Leonard! Retreat! Our land forces are too close!”
I gave the orders. Maxite’s pink blobs of fire were constantly arriving from Kalima. He had seen our disaster. The black beam mounted on the shore seemed impregnable, unless perhaps from the rear I could assault its gunners with the Frazier thought-beam. I told Maxite my plan and he approved.
I swept back toward the Virgins’ Island. I would go back and come up over the west mainland, flying low. I could make such speed that in a few minutes I would be behind Talon’s barrage. Talon’s rafts were all well out from shore now, gathered in a group.
I swung within a mile of them. Their black, cone-shaped barrage was over them. They had made no attack, except the one upward blast at the girls, and no attack now was being made on them.
During those brief moments when we had bombed them, their swimming brutemen must have suffered severe loss. Many dove, and climbed to the rafts. But some were still swimming.