leys with their
comparatively clumsy weapons.

As fast as the air-ball scopes picked out these squads, their operators,
each of whom was in ultronophone communication with a girl long-gunner
at some spot in our line, would inform her of the location of the enemy
unit, and the latter, after a bit of mathematical calculation, would
send a rocket into the air which would come roaring down on, or very
near that unit, and wipe it out.

But for all of that, the number of the Han squads were too much for us.
And for every squad we destroyed, fifty advanced.

And though the lines were still several miles apart, in most places, and
in some cases with mountain ridges intervening, the Han fire control
began to sense the general location of our posts, and things became more
serious as their rockets too began to hiss down and explode here and
there in our lines, not infrequently killing or maiming one or more of
our girls.

The men, our bayonet-gunners, had not as yet suffered, for they were
well in advance of the girls, under strict orders to shoot no rockets
nor in any way reveal their positions; so the Han rockets were going
over their heads.

* * * * *

The Hans in the valleys now were shooting diagonal barrages up the
slopes toward the ridges, where they suspected we would be most strongly
posted, thus making a cross-fire up the two sides of a ridge, while
their heavy batteries, somewhat in the rear, shot straight along the
tops of the ridges. But their valley forces were getting out of
alignment a bit by now, owing to our heterodyne operations.

I ordered our swoopers, of which we had five, to sweep along above these
ridges and destroy the Han batteries.

Up in the higher levels where they were located, the Hans had little
cover. A few of their small rep-ray ships rose to meet our swoopers, but
were battered down. One swooper they brought to earth with a
disintegrator ray beam, by creating a vacuum beneath it, but they did it
no serious damage, for its fall was a light one. Subsequently it did
tremendous damage, cleaning off an entire ridge.

Another swooper ran into a catastrophe that had one chance in a million
of occurring. It hit a heavy Han rocket nose to nose. Inertron sheathing
and all, it was blown into powder.

But the others accomplished their jobs excellently. Small, two-man
ships, streaking straight at the Hans at between 600 and 700 miles an
hour, they could not be hit e