nd-and-Vision apparatus and spoke softly to his compatriots.

"Gentlemen," he said, "I have finished, and it will work effectively!"

Though Maniel spoke softly, it was plain to be seen that he was proud of
his accomplishment, which remained only to be attached to start
performance.

A matter of seconds....

Yet during those seconds was the real might, the real power for utter
devastation, of Moyen fully exposed!

* * * * *

The amphibians got under way as the airplanes of the Americas swept into
the fight.

From the sides of the monsters licked out those golden tongues of
flame--and from the front.

Half a dozen amphibians slipped into New York from the harbor side and
started into the heart of the city. And between the time when Maniel had
said he was ready and the moment when he made his first active move
against Moyen, a half-dozen skyscrapers vanished into nothingness, the
spots where they had stood swept as clear of debris as though the land
had never been reclaimed from Nature!

None was ever destined to know how many lives were lost in that first
attack of the monsters of the golden, myriad tongues; but the monsters
struck in the midst of a working day when the skyscrapers were filled
with office workers.

And resolve struck deep into the hearts of the Secret Agents: if Moyen
were turned back, he must be made to pay for the slaughter.

A matter of seconds....

* * * * *

Then a moment of deathly silence as Munson gave way at the screen for
the gnomelike little Professor Maniel.

"Now, gentlemen!" snapped Maniel. "If my theory is correct,"
manipulating instruments with lightning speed as he talked, "the
reversion of the principle of my Vibration-Retarder--which captures
vibrations speeding outward from the earth and transforms them once
again into sound and pictures audible and visible to the human ear--this
apparatus will disintegrate the monsters as our boats and planes were
disintegrated!

"In this I have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of
time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but
must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact
that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to
remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the
mighty genius of Moyen can return them!"

The whirring, gentle as the whirring of doves' wings.