a swathe nearly a hundred feet wide wherever it played.

With visions of many a life snuffed out below me, I surrendered to the
impulse to stage a single-handed attack on this ship, feeling quite
secure in my floating shell of inertron. I nosed up vertically, and
rocketed for a position above the ship. Then as I climbed upward, as yet
unobserved in my tiny craft that was scarcely larger than myself, I
trained my telultroscope on the Han ship, focussing through to a view of
its interior.

Much as I had imbibed of this generation's hatred for the Hans, I was
forced to admire them for the completeness and efficiency of this
marvelous craft of theirs.

Constantly twirling the controls of my scope to hold the focus, I
examined its interior from nose to stern.

* * * * *

It may be of interest at this point to give the reader a layman's
explanation of the electronic or ionic machinery of these ships, and of
their general construction, for today the general public knows little of
the particular application of the electronic laws which the Hans used,
although the practical application of ultronics are well understood.

Back in the Twentieth Century I had, like literally millions of others,
dabbled a bit in "radio" as we called it then; the science of the Hans
was simply the superdevelopment of "electricity," "radio," and
"broadcasting."

It must be understood that this explanation of mine is not technically
accurate, but only what might be termed an illustrative approximation.

The Hans' power-stations used to broadcast three distinct "_powers_"
simultaneously. Our engineers called them the "_starter_," the
"_pullee_" and the "_sub-disintegrator_." The last named had nothing to
do with the operation of the ships, but was exclusively the powerizer of
the disintegrator generators.

The "_starter_" was not unlike the "radio" broadcasts of the Twentieth
Century. It went out at a frequency of about 1,000 kilocycles, had an
amperage of approximately zero, but a voltage of two billion. Properly
amplified by the use of _inductostatic_ batteries (a development of the
principle underlying the earth induction compass applied to the control
of static) this current energized the _"A" ionomagnetic_ coils on the
airships, large and sturdy affairs, which operated the _Attractoreflex
Receivers_, which in turn "pulled in" the second broadcast power known
as the "_pullee_," absorbing it from every directio