Page:Robert William Cole - The Struggle for Empire; A Story of the Year 2236 (1900).djvu/165

Rh getting larger. Nobody could make out what was happening; some thought it was merely an optical illusion. But the discs rapidly grew in size from minute to minute, until they covered almost half of the heavens.

Then a blind, unreasoning fear seized on every man in both fleets. They stopped fighting and looked through the windows in terror at the ever-increasing moons. Many of the men burst open the air-tight doors and rushed all over the ships in a state of distraction. The captains tugged at the starting levers with a blind desire to flee anywhere away from the unknown danger. The propellers revolved, but they did not move the ships an inch, on account of the vacuum. Every ship lay helpless like a log, moving along under the impulse of the momentum it had already acquired.

All discipline between the decks was soon at an end. The gunners abandoned their guns and stared with fascinated gaze