ssian ships had realized now that the misty sphere that walled
them in was impenetrable, and their rays were off, for none they now had
would penetrate it. The forts were gone.

But the Thing that came behind the _Thought_ was a ship, a little ship
of the same misty white, and it flowed into, and through the wall, and
was within their prison. The Thessian ships turned their rays toward it,
and waited. What was this thing?

The ovaloid ship which drifted so slowly toward them suddenly seemed to
jerk, and from it reached pseudopods! An amoeba on a titanic scale! It
writhed its way purposefully toward the nearest ship, and while that
ship waited, a pseudopod reached out, and suddenly drove through the
four foot relux armor! A second pseudopod followed with lightning
rapidity, and in an instant the ship had been split from end to end!

Now a hundred rays were leaping toward the thing, and the rays burst
into fire and gouts of light, blackened, burned pseudopods seemed to
fall from the thing and hastily it retreated from the enclosure, flowing
once more through the wall that stopped their rays.

But another Thing came. It was enormous, a mile long, a great, shining
scaly thing, a dragon, and on its mighty neck was mounted an enormous,
distorted head, with great flat nose and huge flapping nostrils. It was
a Thessian head! The mouth, fifty feet across, wrinkled into an horrific
grin, and broken, stained teeth of iron showed in the mouth. Great
talons upraised, it rent the misty wall that bound them, and writhed its
awful length in. The swish of its scales seemed to come to the watchers,
as it chased after a great battleship whose pilot fled in terror. Faster
than the mighty spaceship the awful Thing caught it in mighty talons
that ripped through solid relux. Scratching, fluttering enormous,
blood-red wings, the silvery claws tore away great masses of relux,
sending them flying into space.

Again rays struck at it. Cosmic and moleculars with blinding pencils of
light. For now in the close space of the Wall was an atmosphere, the air
of two great warships, and though the space was great, the air in the
ships was dense.

The rays struck its awful face. The face burst into light, and black,
greasy smoke steamed up, as the thing writhed and twisted horribly,
awful screams ringing out. Then it was free, and half the face was
burned away, and a grinning, bleeding, half-cooked face writhed and
screamed in anger at them. It dart