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.
At that second I had not seen the little discs, but I saw them now!
They came sailing in a line, ten foot, flat, circular discs of a dark
metal; they gleamed reddish where the sunlight painted them. They had
been fastened outside the enemy vessel and in our passing they had
been discharged. They sailed now like whirling plates. There seemed
perhaps twenty of them, heading in a curve toward us.
Grantline's voice came again from the deck audiphone. "Missed them,
Gregg. That's what I thought but at least two of our bolts must have
struck. But it didn't hurt them."
"No," I replied. "It seemed not. They must have a defensive barrage."