ng for all possible help. Your
vessel not only has vast stores of iron, but also mounts weapons of
power. You are requested to proceed to their aid at the earliest
possible moment."

Nerado snapped out orders and the liquid iron fell in streams from
wide-open ports, forming a vast, red pool in the bottom of the dock. In
a short time the great vessel was in equilibrium with the water she
displaced, and as soon as she had attained a slight buoyancy the ports
snapped shut and Nerado threw on the power.

"Go back to your own quarters and stay there until I send for you," the
Nevian directed, and as the Terrestrials obeyed the curt orders the
fish-shaped cruiser of space tore herself from the water and flashed up
into the crimson sky.

"What a barefaced liar!" Bradley exclaimed. The three, transformers cut
off, were back in the middle room of their suite. "You can outswim an
otter, and I happen to know that you came up out of the old DZ83 from a
depth of...."

"Maybe I did exaggerate a trifle," Costigan interrupted him, "but the
more helpless he thinks we are the better for us. And we want to stay
out of any of their cities as long as we can, because they may be hard
places to escape from. I've got a couple of ideas, but they aren't ripe
enough to pick yet.... Wow! how this bird's been traveling! We're there
already! If he hits the water going like this, he'll split himself,
sure!"

With undiminished velocity they were flashing downward in a long slant
toward the beleaguered Third City, and from the flying vessel there was
launched toward the city's central lagoon a torpedo. No missile this,
but a capsule containing a full ton of allotropic iron, which would be
of more use to the Nevian defenders than millions of men. For the Third
City was sore pressed indeed. Around it was one unbroken ring of
boiling, exploding water--water billowing upward with searing, blinding
bursts of superheated steam, or being hurled bodily in all directions in
solid masses by the cataclysmic forces being released by the embattled
fishes of the greater deeps. Her outer defenses were already down, and
even as the Terrestrials stared in amazement another of the immense
hexagonal buildings burst into fragments; its upper structure flying
wildly into scrap metal, its lower half subsiding drunkenly below the
surface of the boiling sea.

The three Terrestrials involuntarily seized whatever supports were at
hand as the Nevian space-ship struck the