It had been an error, that rolling; Grantline lost several shots
because of it. I swung us level. The discs passed within a hundred
feet; half a dozen of them were still closer. Gleaming, whirling
circles, thin as knife-blades; they passed close under our stern, came
broadside.
These were tense, horrible seconds. The discs skimmed our bow; one
seemed to miss our dome by inches. Grantline's volley annihilated four
more, but there were still eight of them. They swung in at our stern.
I was aware of confusion throughout the _Cometara_. The crew and
stewards were running up to the bow quarter-deck. My second officer
stood there, stricken. The stern lookout screamed his futile warning.
Useless! I saw one of the discs strike our stern dome, then another.
Still others. They were silent blows, but it seemed that I could feel
them cutting into the dome-plates.
The dome was cracking! Then, after that horrible instant, came the
sound: crunch, a rumble; the grind of crushed and breaking metal;
then the puff and surge of the outward explosion.
I saw the whole tip of the stern dome cracking, bursting outward,
forced by our interior air pressure. And over all the _Cometara_ the
outgoing air was sucking and whining with a growing rush of wind.