d
one apiece. But a shielded swooper, while impervious to the "dis" ray,
was helpless against squadrons of Han aircraft, for the Hans developed a
technique of playing their beams underneath the swooper in such fashion
as to suck it down flutteringly into the vacuum so created, until they
brought it finally, and more or less violently, to earth.

Ultimately the Hans broke our blockade to a certain extent, when they
resumed traffic between their cities in great convoys, protected by
squadrons of cruisers in vertical formation, playing a continuous
cross-fire of disintegrator beams ahead of them and down on the sides in
a most effective screen, so that it was very difficult for us to get a
rocket through to the repeller rays.

But we lined the scar paths beneath their air routes for miles at a
stretch with concealed gunners, some of whom would sooner or later
register hits, and it was seldom that a convoy made the trip between
Nu-Yok and Bos-Tan, Bah-Flo, Si-ka-ga or Ah-la-nah without losing
several of its ships.

Hans who reached the ground alive were never taken prisoner. Not even
the splendid discipline of the Americans could curb the wild hate
developed through centuries of dastardly oppression, and the Hans were
mercilessly slaughtered, when they did not save us the trouble by
committing suicide.

Several times the Hans drove "air wedges" over our lines in this
vertical or "cloud bank" formation, ploughing a scar path a mile or more
wide through our positions. But at worst, to us, this did not mean the
loss of more than a dozen men and girls, and generally their raids cost
them one or more ships. They cut paths of destruction across the map,
but they could not cover the entire area, and when they had ploughed out
over our lines, there was nothing left for them to do but to turn around
and plough back to Nu-Yok. Our lines closed up again after each raid,
and we continued to take heavy toll from convoys and raiding fleets.
Finally they abandoned these tactics.

So at the time of which I speak, the Spring of 2420 A.D., the Americans
and the Hans were temporarily at pretty much of a deadlock. But the Hans
were as desperate as we were sanguine, for we had time on our side.

It was at this period that we first learned of the Airlords'
determination, a very unpopular one with their conscripted populations,
to carry the fight to us on the ground. The time had passed when
command of the air meant victory. We had no visi