Tom and his companions shielded their eyes from the dazzling brilliance.
Fortunately, the
A FIERY VICTORY 173
heavy, tinted quartz-glass view pane provided protection.
After a while the brilliance faded enough for a direct view of the still-incandescent mass. Glowing shards of wreckage, hurled outward by the explosive reaction, were falling back toward the asteroid in a fiery rain!
“Roarin’ rockets!” Arv gasped breathlessly. “What a spectacle!”
The others could only stare in awed silence.
“Did you expect that to happen, skipper?” Hank asked at last.
Tom shrugged. “I thought it might,” he admitted in a grim voice. “I figured the Cobra would keep the deadly radiation barrier in position at full intensity to the last moment, hoping to trap us. As it turned out, he waited too long to dispel the barrier-not realizing we had already entered the area of antimatter particles.”
“That’s why the picture faded, and that’s why you turned, eh?” Arv asked.
Tom nodded. “It was pretty awful, but I had to know what happened.”
Tom reported the destruction of the Cobra’s ship, over the intercom, to the other crewmen aboard. Some responded with cheers at hearing of the final defeat of the enemy, but most of them received the news with awe-struck murmurs.
Meanwhile, the young inventor was heading back to the asteroid for a mop-up of the Cobra’s
174 THE ASTEROID PIRATES
remaining forces. To take his shipmates’ minds off what had happened, Tom asked Hank about the Challenger’s movements after he and Bud and Chow had gone to reconnoiter the base.
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