"Otis Adelbert Kline - Man from the Moon" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kline Otis Adelbert)

Presently I saw a huge enemy fleet put out command, and I would be free to carry out my
from Mars, evidently with the intention of meeting attack.
and giving battle to my fleet. This did not fit in When I drew near the central wave station of
with my plans at all, so I immediately gave secret the Martians I saw that my other four ships had
orders to all of my commanders, then bade them arrived on schedule, and ordered the attack. We
disperse. were discovered almost instantly, and a thousand
There were nearly a thousand magnetic wave red rays were flashed at us, but we were able to
stations on Mars, most of which were in neutralize these by laying down a barrage of green
continuous use because of the terrific efforts the rays. Then a number of Martian ether ships,
Martians were putting forth to crush Magong. reserved to guard, the central station, arose and
These stations were sending out powerful, man- attacked us from above. One of their rays pierced
directed magnetic lines of force, which drew all our upper barrage and one of our ships, with her
relatively small particles of matter, with which controls destroyed, plunged dizzily groundward,
they came in contact, toward the stations from but was disintegrated by the red rays before she
which they were projected. This procedure would had fallen half way.
have been dangerous to the Martians themselves With this ship gone my barrage was
had they not been clever enough to cross the lines weakened, and I knew that it would only be a
of force and form contracting vortices, hundreds of matter of minutes until we should all meet a like
thousands of miles from their planet. Under the fate. As certain death faced us, I thought quickly,
direction of the central station, these vortices were and as quickly gave orders, resolving that in our
combined and recombined at regular intervals, passing we should at least cripple the central wave
until visible nebulae resulted. The nebulae were station of the enemy. My ships instantly responded
condensed by extra and special lines of force from to my command, and in a moment all were
the central station, then projected at Magong, plunging directly downward, temporarily protected
close-knit, spherical clusters of stone and metal. above and below by our green ray barrage тАУ our
When the central station was turned away from the objective the glass dome of the central wave
target by the axial rotation of the planet, a station. It was my hope that when we crashed
duplicate-control station on the other side carried through this dome to our death we might destroy,
or at least cripple this station, and thus hamper the
9
Otis Adelbert Kline Man from the Moon Amazing Stories, October, 1930

Martians and give my father the time he needed to fit
out other ships with atmosphere destroyers, thus
assuring the victory of Magong.
But the Martians were too wise for me. They
must have suddenly focused their lines of magnetic
force on our ships, forming a contracting vortex
a short distance above the dome, for we lost
control of all of them simultaneously.
They revolved about each other for a
moment, and then crashed together.
With that crash I lost
consciousness....
When I recovered my
senses once more I was
lying on a metal