the planes had been there had floated or crashed down a
litter of non-ferrous wreckage. And now the cone of space-ships from the
Buffalo base of Triplanetary was approaching Pittsburgh, hurling itself
toward the Nevian plunderer and toward known, gruesome and hopeless
defeat.

"Stop them, Hinkle!" Samms cried. "It's sheer slaughter! They haven't
got a thing--they aren't even equipped yet with the iron drive!"

"I know it," the commissioner groaned, "and Admiral Barnes knows it as
well as we do, but it can't be helped--wait a minute! The Washington
cone is reporting. They're as close as the other, and they have the new
armament. Philadelphia is close behind, and so is New York. Now perhaps
we can do something!"

The Buffalo flotilla slowed and stopped, and in a matter of minutes the
detachments from the other bases arrived. The cone was formed and
iron-driven vessels in the van, the old-type craft far in the rear, it
bore down upon the Nevian, vomiting from its hollow front a solid
cylinder of annihilation. Once more the screens of the Nevian flared
into brilliance, once more the red cloud of destruction was flung
abroad. But these vessels were not entirely defenseless. Their
iron-driven ultra-generators threw out screens of the Nevians' own
formulae, screens of prodigious power to which the energies of the
amphibians clung and at which they clawed and tore in baffled, wildly
coruscant displays of power unthinkable. For minutes the furious
conflict raged, while the inconceivable energy being dissipated by those
straining screens hurled itself in terribly destructive bolts of
lightning upon the city far beneath.

No battle of such incredible violence could long endure. Triplanetary's
ships were already exerting their utmost power, while the Nevians,
contemptuous of Solarian science, had not yet uncovered their full
strength. Thus the last desperate effort of mankind was proved futile as
the invaders forced their beams deeper and deeper into the overloaded,
defensive screens of the war-vessels; and one by one the supposedly
invincible space-ships of humanity dropped in horribly dismembered
wreckage upon the ruins of what had once been Pittsburgh.

CHAPTER IX

Specimens

Only too well founded was Costigan's conviction that the submarine of
the deep-sea fishes had not been able to prevail against Nerado's
formidable engines of destruction. For days the Nevian lifeboat with its
three Terrestrial passengers