Explore "The Invading Asteroid" by Manly Wade Wellman on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
Higher and higher through the night mounted the small, trim space-launch. Far below the lights of St. Louis, capital of the Terrestrial League, shone as myriad stars and reflected gleams on the flat surfaces and soaring spires of the uppermost levels. From a great height the city resembled a rambling building of tremendous size, wherein little specks of surface-cars scampered over miniature traffic-ways and clouds of air and space-vehicles danced around and over the town like midges.
It was a fighting ship that was mounting upward, one of the many that sped through space in the days of 2675, when Earth and Mars were in the throes of that gigantic and regrettable conflict, the Interplanetary War. However, the disintegrating ray apparatus, a deadly weapon that enabled Terrestrial forces to compete on something like equal terms with the overwhelming numbers of the space-navies of Mars, had been removed from bow and stern. Most of the space inside the cigar-shaped hull was occupied by engines to insure highest maneuverability and speed, but in the center was a cushioned chamber large enough to allow its three occupants to ride in comfort.