the one which might
conceivably be in supreme command; but even as he sought the Moon-cubes
moved to the attack. The globes on the tops of the columns dimmed their
lights, and the squares, rectangles and globes got instantly into
terrible motion.

Southward from the position in which they had formed they began to move,
the squares and rectangles apparently sliding along the surface of the
scarred and broken soil, the globes rolling.

Southward there was the vast wall of the Gens that bordered the devasted
area in that direction, and the cube-army was instantly at full charge
toward this, in what Sarka realized was, to be a war of demolition!

Within a minute, Sarka was conscious of a trembling of all the
laboratory, and the eyes of Jaska were wide with fear. Swiftly the
trembling grew, until sound now was added to the vast, awesome tremor--a
vast, roaring crescendo of sound that mounted and mounted as the speed
of the cube-army increased. The vanguard of the cube-army struck the
dwelling of the Gens southward of that of Dalis, and a mighty,
rocketing roar sounded in the Master Beryl, was audible inside the
laboratory, even without the aid of the Beryl, at whose surface Sarka
stared as a man fascinated, hypnotized.

* * * * *

The cube-army struck the dwellings, disappeared into them as though they
had been composed of tissue paper, and continued on! Over the tops of
the cube-army toppled the roofs of the dwellings, there, in the midst of
the cubes, to be ground to powder, with a sound as of a million
avalanches grinding together in some awesome, sun-size valley.
Southward, in the wake of the chaotic charge, moved a mighty, gigantic
crevasse, whose sides were the walls of the hives left standing. And
still the cube-army moved in, grinding everything it touched to dust,
trampling buildings into nothingness, destroying utterly along a front
hundreds of miles wide, and as deep as the dwellings of men!

"God!" cried Sarka, his voice so tense that both his father and Jaska
heard it above the roaring which shook and rocked the world. "Do you
see? The Moon-cubes are destroying the dwelling of our people, and the
Martians are to destroy the people who have fled!"

"There must be a way," said Sarka the Second quietly, "to circumvent the
cubes! But what? Your will still rules the cubes which piloted you from
the Moon?"

"Yes," replied Sarka tersely, "but there are only a dozen of the cubes.