energy. Then, mighty drill and plunging mass against iron-driven
wall, eye-tearing and furiously spectacular warfare was waged. Well it
was for Triplanetary, that day, that its super ship carried ample supply
of allotropic iron; well it was that her originally Gargantuan
converters and generators had been doubled and quadrupled in power on
the long Nevian way! For that oven-girdled fortress was powered to
withstand any conceivable assault; but the _Boise_'s power and momentum
were now inconceivable, and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind
that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly
ravening cylinder of energy incredible!

Through the Nevian shield that cylinder gnawed its frightful way, and
down its protecting length there drove Adlington's "Special" bomb.
"Special" it was indeed; so great of girth that it could barely pass
through the central orifice of Ten's mighty projector, so heavily
charged with sensitized atomic iron that its detonation upon any planet
would not have been considered for an instant if that planet's integrity
meant anything to its attackers. Down the shielding pipe of force the
"Special" screamed under full propulsion, and beneath the surface of
Nevia's ocean it plunged.

"Cut!" yelled Adlington, and as the scintillating drill expired, the
bomber snapped his detonating switch.

For a moment the effect of the explosion seemed unimportant. A dull, low
rumble was all that was to be heard of a concussion that jarred red
Nevia to her very center; and all that could be seen was a slow heaving
of the water. But that heaving did not cease. Slowly, _so_ slowly it
seemed to the observers now high in the heavens, the waters rose up and
parted; revealing a vast chasm blown deep into the ocean's rocky bed.
Higher and higher the lazy, mountains of water reared; effortlessly to
pick up, to smash, to grind into fragments, and finally to toss aside
every building, every structure, every scrap of material substance
pertaining to the whole Nevian city.

Flattened out, driven backward for miles the tortured waters were urged,
leaving exposed bare ground and broken rock where once had been the
ocean's busy floor; while tremendous blasts of incandescent gas raved
upward, buffeting even the enormous masses of the two space-ships,
poised by their breathless crews so high above the site of the
explosion. Then the displaced millions of tons of water rushed back into
that newly rived pit,