l miles to the southeast, an entire section of the country
literally blew up, in a fiery eruption that shot a mile into the air.
The concussion, when it reached me, was terrific. The light was
blinding.

And our _scopemen_ reported the instant annihilation of the squadron.

* * * * *

What happened, of course, was this; the Hans knew nothing of our ability
to see at night through our ultroscopes. Regarding itself as invisible
in the darkness, and believing our instruments would pick up its
location when its _dis_ rays went into operation, the squadron made the
fatal error of not turning on its canopies.

To say that consternation overwhelmed the Han high command would be
putting it mildly. Despite their use of code and other protective
expedients, we picked up enough of their messages to know that the
incident badly demoralized them.

Their next attempt was made in daylight. I was aloft in my swooper at
the time, hanging motionless about a mile up. Below, the groundships
looked like a number of oval lozenges gliding across a map, each
surrounded by a circular halo of luminescence that was its _dis_ ray
canopy.

They had nosed up over the spiny ridge of what once had been Jersey
City, and were moving across the meadowlands. There were twenty of them.

Coming to the darker green that marked the forest on the "map" below me,
they adopted a wedge formation, and playing their pencil rays ahead of
them, they began to beam a path for themselves through the forest. In my
ears sounded the ultrophone instructions of my executives to the
long-gunners in the forest, and one by one I heard the girls report
their rapid retirement with their guns and other inertron-lightened
equipment. I located several of them with my scopes, with which I could,
of course, focus through the leafy screen above them, and noted with
satisfaction the unhurried speed of their movements.

On ploughed the Han wedge, while my girls separated before it and
retired to the sides. With a rapidity much greater than that of the
ships themselves, the beams penetrated deeper and deeper into the
forest, playing continuously in the same direction, literally melting
their way through, as a stream of hot water might melt its way through a
snow bank.

Then a curious thing happened. One of the ships near one wing of the
wedge must have passed over unusually soft ground, or perhaps some
irregularity in the control of its canopy gen