p off any intruders."

There were but three levels in this mine, and he covered them rapidly,
Jerran at his heels. He slew seven more spheres, with four zanphs. His
blood was up and his tongue lolled with excitement.

To his banner, which was a dead god on Jerran's pick, there came
forty-three miners. Four others declined, and were allowed to stay at
their posts, true to their false gods and the service of the gentry.

Coming out of this mine, he led a small army, and felt like a conquering
general already. In two hours he had invaded every shaft in the valley,
and six hundred men less a score or so were at his back.

"How's this for a start?" he asked Nirea, meeting her walking her roan
on the grass. She glanced at the mass of men, all those in the van
carrying dead globes. "Not bad ... but have you seen the sky, Mink?"

He looked upward. From horizon to horizon the sky was ablaze with
circles of light, red and green and violet, pure terrible white and
flickering yellow. _The buttons_, murmured his men behind him. _The
buttons are awake!_

[Illustration]

"You couldn't expect to do it in secret, Revel," said John. The old man
was as spry and eager as a boy, thought the Mink. "Now let's not waste
time. I'm banking that the invaders, I mean the globes, won't blast this
valley except as a last resort; if they read my mind, or if their
science has gone far enough for 'em to recognize an anti-force-screen
thrower when they see one, then we're practically atom soup now."

Revel, having understood at least one portion of the speech--"Let's not
waste time"--waved his miners forward.

They filled the shaft and the tunnel, they thronged into the cave; when
the Mink had shown them the machine to be moved, they fought one another
for the honor of being first to touch it.

* * * * *

It stood solidly on the floor, ten feet high, twelve wide, square and
black with twin coils and a thick projection like an enormous gun on the
top. Men jammed around it, bent and gripped a ledge near the bottom,
heaved up. Loath to move, it rocked a bit, then was hoisted off the
ground. They staggered forward with it.

The hole in the wall was far too small.

"Miners! The best of you, and I don't want braggarts and second-raters,
but the best! Tear down that wall!" Revel stood on a case and roared his
commands. Men pushed out of the tunnel's throng, big bearded men, small
tough men. They stood shoulder to s