naudibly.

The bomb flashed blinding scarlet in mid-air, and fell, a descending
column of blaze eddying spirally in the midst of a whirlwind. Both the
aeroplanes were tossed like shuttlecocks, hurled high and sideways and
the steersman, with gleaming eyes and set teeth, fought in great banking
curves for a balance. The gaunt man clung tight with hand and knees; his
nostrils dilated, his teeth biting his lips. He was firmly strapped....

When he could look down again it was like looking down upon the crater
of a small volcano. In the open garden before the Imperial castle a
shuddering star of evil splendour spurted and poured up smoke and flame
towards them like an accusation. They were too high to distinguish
people clearly, or mark the bomb's effect upon the building until
suddenly the facade tottered and crumbled before the flare as sugar
dissolves in water. The man stared for a moment, showed all his long
teeth, and then staggered into the cramped standing position his straps
permitted, hoisted out and bit another bomb, and sent it down after its
fellow.

The explosion came this time more directly underneath the aeroplane
and shot it upward edgeways. The bomb box tipped to the point of
disgorgement, and the bomb-thrower was pitched forward upon the third
bomb with his face close to its celluloid stud. He clutched its handles,
and with a sudden gust of determination that the thing should not escape
him, bit its stud. Before he could hurl it over, the monoplane was
slipping sideways. Everything was falling sideways. Instinctively he
gave himself up to gripping, his body holding the bomb in its place.

Then that bomb had exploded also, and steersman, thrower, and aeroplane
were just flying rags and splinters of metal and drops of moisture in
the air, and a third column of fire rushed eddying down upon the doomed
buildings below....

Section 4

Never before in the history of warfare had there been a continuing
explosive; indeed, up to the middle of the twentieth century the only
explosives known were combustibles whose explosiveness was due entirely
to their instantaneousness; and these atomic bombs which science burst
upon the world that night were strange even to the men who used them.
Those used by the Allies were lumps of pure Carolinum, painted on the
outside with unoxidised cydonator inducive enclosed hermetically in a
case of membranium. A little celluloid stud between the handles by which
the bomb was lift