"
He sent another message to Murgatroyd. The _Astronef_ sprang a thousand
feet towards the zenith; another touch on the button, and she stopped
exactly over the biggest of the Martian air-ships; another, and she
dropped on to it like a stone and smashed it to fragments. Then she
stopped and mounted again above the broken circle of the fleet, while
the pieces of the air-ship and what was left of her crew plunged
downwards through the crimson clouds in a fall of nearly thirty thousand
feet.
Within the next few moments the rest of the Martian fleet had followed
it, sinking rapidly down through the clouds and scattering in all
directions.
"They seem to have had enough of it," laughed Redgrave, as the
_Astronef_, in obedience to another signal, began to drop towards the
surface of Mars. "Now we'll go down and see if they're in a more
reasonable frame of mind. At any rate we've won our first scrimmage,
dear."
"But it was rather brutal, Lenox, wasn't it?"
"When you are dealing with brutes, little woman, it is sometimes
necessary to be brutal."
"And you look a wee bit brutal right now," she replied, looking up at
him with something like a look of fear in her eyes. "I suppose that is
because you have just killed somebody--or somethings--whichever they
are."
"Do I, really?"
The hard-set jaw relaxed and his lips melted into a smile under his
moustache, and he bent down and kissed her.
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