ed feet aloft the
fliers braked their headlong flight, hovered motionlessly in echelon
formation.

A moment's breathless pause--to the hiding men it seemed eternity--and
all the uneven terrain, rocks, trees, bushes, the soil itself, burst
into glowing white crystal clearness. The Mercutians had turned on
their search beams.

Hilary gazed clear through the rock behind which he crouched as though
it were a transparency. All around him he saw the prone bodies of his
men, naked to the view of all and sundry.

A hoarse derisive chuckle rasped from above. Hilary sprang to his
feet; further attempt at concealment was useless. As he did so, the
air seemed to split in two, there was a blinding rending crash. Not
ten feet from where he stood, the ground tossed in torture. A man
screamed--terribly. The first blow had been struck.

Hilary burned with a cold consuming anger. "Up, men, and fire. Aim
forward about three feet back of the prow." That was where the pilot
would be.

A scattered burst of cheers answered him. On all sides, like crystal
ghosts, the Earthmen rose to their feet. They were fighting men.

Hilary took careful aim at a flier almost directly overhead and fired.
He could have sworn he hit it, but nothing happened. Grim's dynol
pistol flamed redly nearby. The tracer pellet scorched upward,
impacted, against the hull of a flier. There was a faint detonation,
and the next instant the air was full of flying fragments.

"Got that one," he said softly.

* * * * *

Hilary was conscious of a faint envy. His automatic seemed like a
harmless popgun against that deadly weapon. But he drew another bead
and fired again. With bated breath he awaited the result. Nothing.
Hilary groaned, made as if to throw the useless gun away, when the
flier he had aimed at wabbled, tried to right itself, and crashed in a
swift erratic loop.

By now the pitifully few weapons of the Earthmen were popping. Two
more of the enemy fliers hurtled to destruction. But as at a given
signal, the air above them seemed suddenly to flame destruction. With
the noise of a thousand thunderbolts the massed rays struck.

The groaning Earth tossed and heaved in billowing waves to escape its
torture. The trees were blazing pyres. It seemed impossible for
anything that lives within that area to escape instant destruction.

Hilary felt a wave of blinding heat envelop him, and he was thrown
flat to the quaking ground. Frig