intervals of something less than a second, it was discharging
small projectiles which, traveling under their own continuously reduced
power, were arching into the air, to fall precisely five miles ahead and
explode with the force of eight-inch shells, such as we used in the
First World War.

Another gunner, fifty feet to the right of him, waved a hand and called
out something to him. Then, picking up his own tube and tripod, he
gauged the distance between the trees ahead of him, and the height of
their lowest branches, and bending forward a bit, flexed his muscles and
leaped lightly, some twenty-five feet. Another leap took him another
twenty feet or so, where he began to set up his piece.

I ordered my observer then to switch to the barrage itself. He got a
close focus on it, but this showed little except a continuous series of
blinding flashes, which, from the viewplate, lit up the entire interior
of the ship. An eight-hundred-foot focus proved better. I had thought
that some of our French and American artillery of the 20th Century had
achieved the ultimate in mathematical precision of fire, but I had never
seen anything to equal the accuracy of that line of terrific explosions
as it moved steadily forward, mowing down trees as a scythe cuts grass
(or used to 500 years ago), literally churning up the earth and the
splintered, blasted remains of the forest giants, to a depth of from ten
to twenty feet.

By now the two curtains of fire were nearing each other, lines of
vibrant, shimmering, continuous, brilliant destruction, inevitably
squeezing the panic-stricken Sinsings between them.

Even as I watched, a group of them, who had been making a futile effort
to get their three rep-ray machines into the air, abandoned their
efforts, and rushed forth into the milling mob.

I queried the Control Boss sharply on the futility of this attempt of
theirs, and learned that the Hans, apparently in doubt as to what was
going on, had continued to "play safe," and broken off their power
broadcast, after ordering all their own ships east of the Alleghenies to
the ground, for fear these ships they had traded to the Sinsings might
be used against them.

Again I turned to my viewplate, which was still focussed on the central
section of the Sinsing works. The confusion of the traitors was entirely
that of fear, for our barrage had not yet reached them.

Some of them set up their long-guns and fired at random over the barrage
line,