The hills below rocked and roared to the repeated shock. Trees fell in crashing ruin as lightning-bolt or infra-sound shivered them to bits; great cars of burned earth and molten rock marked the spots where the gravity-beam struck the ground. All round was a maze of yellow rays, lightning flashes, and green globes that reeled, rose, fell, sometimes blowing up, sometimes giving ground, but always fighting back sternly and vigorously and always rising through the clear spring evening.
Murray Lee, at the rear of the ship, was the only one to see an American rocket-ship, caught and held for a few fatal moments by two yellow rays, slowly divest itself of its outer armor, then of its inner, and go whirling to the earth, dissolved into its ultimate fragments by those irresistible pennons of sound.
Gloria Rutherford at the prow was the only one to see another caught bow-on in a yellow ray, reply by firing its gravity-beam right down the ray and into the green globe through the port from which the ray had issued. The ray went out--a spreading spot of flame appeared at the port and the great green globe crumpled into a little ball of flame before her eyes. But such events as these were the merest flashes in the close-locked combat. For the most part they had time to do nothing but handle the controls, throw switches to and fro, shoot forth gravity-beam and lightning-flash in endless alternation at the Lassan ships of which there always appeared to be one more right before them as Sherman twisted and turned the _Monitor_ with a skill that was almost uncanny.
Suddenly he pulled out; the four looked round. They were miles high; below half hidden in the dusk, were the red and brown roofs of a city. Far away on the horizon the battle still roared; a rolling cloud of smoke now, shot with the vivid fires of the American lightning flashes. The wings of their ship were spread; they were soaring gently earthward without the application of the rocket power.
"Had to get away for a minute," Sherman explained. "We were heating up from the speed. My God, but we're high up; at least 45,000 feet!"
"Yes, and getting higher," Ben pointed out. "Those green globes must be headed for the moon."
"Do you know, I wouldn't be a bit surprised but what you're right," replied Sherman, "I'll bet an oil-ball against the whole Lassan city that they think we can't navigate space and they're trying to get above us and then hang around and pop us when we have to land. Well, come on gang, let's get back."