The vessel was still a tiny blob, but every instant it was enlarging,
doubling its visual size. Drac said tensely, "Fifteen hundred miles!
We'll pass in a minute and a half."
I turned the angle of the stern rocket-streams. The firmament slowly
began swinging; the enemy ship seemed swaying up over us. I was
turning our top to it, so that Grantline might fire directly upward
from both sides almost simultaneously. It might be possible, if I
could roll us over at just the proper seconds.
But the enemy anticipated us. As they observed our roll, again the
bow-beacon flashed on. It visibly struck us, bathed all our length in
its spreading opalescent radiance.
It seemed for an instant to do nothing. Our dome did not crack; there
was no shock. But our side-roll slowed. The heavens stopped their
swing, and then swung back! We were upon an even keel again, the enemy
level with our bow. Against the force of my turning rocket-streams
this radiation had righted us. It clung a few seconds more, and again
vanished.
Grantline's deck audiphone rang with his startled voice: "Gregg, roll
us over! Quick! I can only fire from one side."
"I can't."
It was too late now. A few hundred miles of distance! Drac stood
clutching me, staring through the port. And I stared, breathless,
awaiting the results of these next few seconds.
The ships passed like crossing, speeding meteors. A few seconds of
final approach; I saw the enemy vessel as an elongated, flattened
globe, with a triple-terraced dome and terraced decks beneath it. That
queer stack on top! The round discs, like ten-foot eyes, gleamed along
the equator of the bulging hull.
One of Grantline's weapons fired a silent flash. Still out of range.
The spit of our electrons leaped from our side. The enemy was
untouched.
The thought stabbed at me: _Anita! Not killed by that one._
Another shot from Grantline.
No result. It seemed that I saw the bolt strike. There was a
reddening, a flash upon that bulging hull, but nothing more.
I was aware again of the enemy bow-beam swinging upon us. The beam was
pressing us over again so that in a moment we would be hull-bottom to
the enemy and Grantline could not fire.
He anticipated it. The ship was broadside to us. In the split second
of that passing I saw that it was not fifty miles away, hardly ten.
Grantline flung his remaining bolts. The enemy was a streaked blur
going by; and all in that second it was past, reddening in the
distance. Untouched by our bolts? It seemed so. The bow radiance
darted ahead of it. The globular shape, unharmed, dwindled in the
distance behind us.
And it had done nothing to us!
The control levers were in my hands. I would shift the gravity-plates,
and make the quickest turn we could. We would go around the Moon,
probably, and come back within an hour or two. Perhaps our adversary
would also turn to encounter us again.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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