ng some three feet in length, from whose tip there
flashed those spurts of flame which had puzzled the Earth people before
the actual launching of the attack.

* * * * *

Beyond these weapons, the Martians seemed to possess no weapons of
offense at all, nor of defense.

"With our ray directors and atom-disintegrators," said Sarka, moving
into the Exit Dome with Jaska, "we can blast them from the face of the
Earth!"

But in a moment he realized that he had spoken too hastily.

The nearest fire-ball was, of course, within the area of the Gens of
Cleric, and Sarka could here see with his naked eyes all that
transpired. The Martian passengers, who moved swiftly away from their
fire-ball vehicles, then a flight of the Gens of Cleric descended upon
the fireball and its fleeing passengers, with tiny ray directors and
atom-disintegrators held to the fore, ready for action.

The Martians, at some distance from their glowing vehicle, paused and
formed a ragged line, facing the ball, staring at the descending people
of the Gens of Cleric, their tentaclelike eyes waving to and fro, oddly
like the tentacles of those aircars of the Moon.

The flight was hovering above the first fireball. In a second now, at
the command of an underling, the ray directors would destroy fire-ball
and Martians as thoroughly as though they had never existed at all.

* * * * *

But then a strange thing happened. At that exact moment, timing their
actions to fractions of seconds, the Martians raised and pointed their
canelike weapons of the spurting flames. They pointed them, however, not
at the Earthlings, but at the fire-ball which had brought them to Earth!

Instantly the fire-ball exploded as with the roaring of a hundred mighty
volcanoes--and the descending flight of the Gens of Cleric was blasted
into countless fragments! Bits of them flew in all directions. Many
dropped, the mangled, infinitesmal remains of them, down to the roof of
Earth, while many were hurled skyward through formations above
them--while those formations, to a height of a full two miles, were
broken asunder. Many flights above that first flight were smashed and
broken, their individual members hurled in all directions by that one
single blast of a single fire-ball.

Individuals who escaped destruction were hurled end over end, upward
through other flights higher above, and the whole aggregation of flights
wh