d truss-work.

* * * * *

It was as though the side of an ant-heap had been ripped away. Inside
the domed building hundreds of Rogans ran this way and that on their
elongated legs, squealing in their staccato, high-pitched tongue.

With blind fury the mad monster charged in through the gaping hole it
had battered for itself. In all directions the Rogans scattered. Then
an authoritative tall figure with a tube in each of its four
sucker-disks, whipped out a command and pointed to the great coils
which lay immediately in the berserk monster's path.

The command restored some sort of order. Losing their fear of the
beast in their greater fear of the damage it might do, the Rogans
massed to stop it before it could demolish the Rogan heart of power.

At this point Brand saw an opening of the kind he had been praying
for. The Rogans had retreated before the terrific charge of the
monster in such a way that the space between its vast bulk and the
control board was clear.

"After me!" he shouted to Dex. "One of us has got to reach that lever
while the creature's still there to shield us!"

The two Earthmen dashed through the jagged hole in the wall and raced
to the control board just as the huge lizard, a smoking mass, sank to
the floor. Brand gazed almost fearfully at the lever-slot.

Was there a reverse to the gravity-control action? There was room in
the slot for the lever to be pulled down below the neutral point, if
that meant anything....

* * * * *

Behind them the great bulk of the dead lizard was disappearing with
incredible quickness under the rays of the tubes directed on it. Now
the pumpkin-shaped heads on the opposite side were visible through a
fleeting glimpse of a skeleton that was like the framework of a
skyscraper. And now the colossal bones themselves were melting, while
over everything hung a pall of greasy black smoke.

"Hurry, for God's sake!" gasped Dex.

Brand threw down the lever till it stuck. At once that invisible ocean
poured crushingly over them, throwing them to their knees and sweeping
the Rogans flat on their hideous faces just as half a hundred tubes
were flashing down to point at the Earthmen.

"More--if you can!" grated Dex, whirling this way and that and
spraying the massed Rogans with his death-dealing tube. Dozens went up
in smoke under that discharge; but other dozens remained to raise
themselves laboriously and