far to the north, spreading a pall of red
smoke that drifted like a cloud. It was followed by others at scattered
points in the northern sky.

"A Han raid!" Bill exclaimed in amazement. "The first in seven years!"

"Maybe it's just one of their ships off its course," I ventured.

"No," said Wilma in some agitation. "That would be green rockets. Red
means only one thing, Tony. They're sweeping the countryside with their
dis beams. Can you see anything, Bill?"

"We had better get under cover," Gerdi said nervously. "The four of us
are bunched here in the open. For all we know they may be twelve miles
up, out of sight, yet looking at us with a projecto'."

Bill had been sweeping the horizon hastily with his glass, but
apparently saw nothing.

"We had better scatter, at that," he said finally. "It's orders, you
know. See!" He pointed to the valley.

Here and there a tiny human figure shot for a moment above the foliage
of the treetops.

"That's bad," Wilma commented, as she counted the jumpers. "No less than
fifteen people visible, and all clearly radiating from a central point.
Do they want to give away our location?"

The standard orders covering air raids were that the population was to
scatter individually. There should be no grouping, or even pairing, in
view of the destructiveness of the disintegrator rays. Experience of
generations had proved that if this were done, and everybody remained
hidden beneath the tree screens, the Hans would have to sweep mile after
mile of territory, foot by foot, to catch more than a small percentage
of the community.

Gerdi, however, refused to leave Bill, and Wilma developed an equal
obstinacy against quitting my side. I was inexperienced at this sort of
thing, she explained, quite ignoring the fact that she was too; she was
only thirteen or fourteen years old at the time of the last air raid.

However, since I could not argue her out of it, we leaped together about
a quarter of a mile to the right, while Bill and Gerdi disappeared down
the hillside among the trees.

Wilma and I both wanted a point of vantage from which we might overlook
the valley and the sky to the north, and we found it near the top of the
ridge, where, protected from visibility by thick branches, we could look
out between the tree trunks, and get a good view of the valley.

No more rockets went up. Except for a few of those warning red clouds,
drifting lazily in a blue sky, there was no visible indi