I had gone perhaps fifty feet below the keel with my dive when I righted. I was mounting. I saw the opalescent ten-foot circle of the beam moving along the Cometara hull. It seemed to do no damage; then suddenly it darted down and clung to me.
I felt nothing save the impact of a gentle push, something shoving with a ponderable force against me.
I saw the Cometara receding, the heavens swinging as I turned over. The red disc of the distant Earth swooped. The Moon surface momentarily seemed rotating and lifting above me.
I was helpless, rolling, then whirling end-over-end. Then again I steadied. The beam was gone from me.
I saw the Cometara, a full mile away from me! The enemy ship was again in motion, moving toward me, and between the Cometara and the Earth. And the beam was steady upon the Cometara's mid-section.
The Cometara had a new velocity now. I could not miss it. She was dwindling rapidly in visual size; relative to me, she was receding, falling upon the Moon. More than that she was being pushed downward by the repulsive force of the strange enemy beam upon her. I stared, as with all the little dots which were our men around and upon her, she went down into the void.
I found myself presently alone up here, with the enemy ship hovering nearby. Its maneuvering to thrust the wrecked Cometara toward the Moon had brought it within a mile of me. The bow-beam was still on the Cometara; and then abruptly it vanished.
The Cometara had almost dwindled beyond the sight of my unaided vision. By chance, undoubtedly, the beam had fallen upon me and thrust me from the wreck. I was alone up here now with the enemy, but they may not have noticed me, or cared. I found my power mechanism intact. I turned it on; slowly, like a log in water, I began moving away.
A minute. Five minutes. The Cometara was lost. Grantline, all the men, were lost; with that added downward thrust they could never free themselves from the falling wreck.
I was jerked out of my thoughts by the sight of an oncoming red blob. Something was coming from the enemy ship, red with the sunlight and earthlight, silvered by the Moon and the stars. It took form. It was a disc, another of those cursed whirling discs, sent to annihilate me!