Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/149

Rh While all this gentle love play was going on at Neptune, the surrounding space was echoing with the crash of battle. Sometimes the stillness of the air and the peacefulness of some quiet country scenery would be rudely interrupted by a frightful shriek as a flaming mass of metal crashed down on trees, rocks, and buildings and made the ground quiver with the shock for miles around. As soon as the mass of twisted and scoriated metal was cool enough, the inhabitants crowded round it with feelings of reverential awe. They knew that it was the wreck of some battleship that had met its fate in the distant regions of space far above their heads. When these wandering masses got within the sphere of the planet's attraction they were drawn towards it with ever-increasing velocity until they reached the atmosphere, when they were heated to incandescence by the friction. Sometimes the magazine was exploded by the heat, and then the terrible projectiles would be flung far and wide,