Outside the Universe by Edmond Hamilton

The moment of swift, terrific battle that followed was to me then only a wild uproar of flashing action and hoarse shouts, as the mighty ships beneath leapt up toward us. It was only another sudden twisting turn of our ship by Korus Kan that saved us from annihilation in that wild first moment of combat, since the score or more of pale, deadly beams from beneath, stabbing past us as we twisted, struck the ships of our squadron behind and in another moment had sent half of them reeling blindly and aimlessly out of sight, driving haphazardly off into space as the ghostly beams annihilated all the life inside them. Then, as we raced still through space above the mighty swarm, the score of attacking ships suddenly divided, a dozen of them driving up toward the ships behind us while the remainder flashed toward us, their great, pale rays still stabbing and slicing as they leapt on.

Even as our ship swerved from the pale beams leaping up toward us, though, I had shouted an order into the tube beside me, and now from our own craft there stabbed down toward the upward-rushing ships a half-dozen long, narrow rays of brilliant red light. Four of the ships below were struck squarely by those brilliant rays, and from our crew came shouts of triumph as those four vanished in blinding flares of crimson light. It was the deadly ray of the Interstellar Patrol, destroying all matter it touched by raising its frequency of vibration, since matter itself is but a certain frequency vibration of the ether, and when that frequency is raised to that of light-vibrations the matter is changed in that moment from solid matter to light.