hind
were armed with shields and spears. Rank by rank and company by company
they came, nearly a thousand strong, the ringing clamor of brazen
trumpets urging them onward. Gerry Norton stared at them blankly,
scarcely able to believe what he saw. All the warriors were women!

They were tall and clean-limbed, with long golden hair that streamed
behind them as they ran. Like Closana, they wore bright-colored loin
cloths and had round gold plates fastened across their breasts. The
might of the Golden Amazons of Venus swept forward like a giant wave,
with a spray of tossing spear points above it. Then the trumpets
sounded again, and the arrow storm began.

The front ranks loosed their long shafts swiftly, and the air became
full of the twang of bow-strings and hiss of speeding arrows. A shouting
officer of the Scaly Ones went down with a pair of shafts feathered in
his chest. His men were dropping all about him as the gold-tipped arrows
struck home.

* * * * *

The reptile men were using their gas-guns now. The sharp hiss of the
discharges rose above the twang of the bow-strings, the snap of the
exploding bullets was like a crackle of old-fashioned musketry. The
projectiles ripped holes in the front ranks of the Amazons, but they
still came bounding forward. Then the sharp reports of the exploding
bullets died away, for the gas-guns were cumbersome things to re-charge
and there was no time. The two lines met with a clash of steel.

Gerry Norton had thrown his armoured Earth-men and Martians as a guard
around Closana when she ran toward the center of the Amazon line. On two
occasions small parties of the Scaly Ones cut their way through the
guarding spears to reach them, and each time the blast of the heavy
ray-guns mowed them down. The clatter of meeting blades was like the
noise of a thousand smithies, the shrill yelping of the reptile men was
drowned out by the triumphant blast of the Amazon trumpets. The Scaly
Ones were giving back all along the line, under pressure of superior
numbers and the greater agility of the lithe Amazons.

Gerry fought with the long, blue-bladed sword in his hand and the shield
of a fallen Amazon on his left arm. With the greater strength of his
earthly muscles, he raged through the fighting while his heavy blade
wrought deadly execution. And then it was over! The Scaly Ones broke up
into scores of fleeing groups and fresh companies of Amazons bounded in
pur