ey came over the
parapet in a wave of howling madness. And they surged into the city,
flinging gas bombs as they came.

CHAPTER X

_The Fight_

The city was pandemonium. Tommy, looking down from his post of
command, swore softly under his breath. The Death Mist was harmless to
the defenders of Yugna as a gas, because of their gas masks. But it
served as a screen. It blotted out the waves of attackers so the steam
guns could not be aimed save at the shortest of short ranges. His
precautions were taking effect, to be sure. Two thirds of the
attackers were Ragged Men drawn from about half the surviving cities,
and against such a horde Yugna could not have held out at all but for
his preparations. Now the defenders took a heavy toll. Swarms of men
came racing toward the open gate, their truncheons aglow in the
sunlight. The ring of Death Mist was contracting as if to strangle the
city, and it left the ramparts bare again. And from more than one
point upon the battlements the roaring clouds of steam burst out
again. A dozen guns concentrated on the racing men of Rahn, plunging
from the jungle to enter by the gate. They were racing forward,
without order but at top speed, to share in the fighting and loot.
Then streams of metal balls tore into them. The front of the irregular
column was wiped out utterly. Wide swathes were cut in the rest. The
survivors ran wildly forward over a litter of dead and dying men.
Electric-charge weapons sent crackling discharges among them. Their
contorted figures reeled and fell or leaped convulsively to lie
forever still where they struck. And then the steam guns turned about
to fire into the rear of the men who had charged past them.

The steam guns had literally blasted away the line of Ragged Men where
they stood. But the line went on, with great ragged gaps in it, to be
sure, but still vastly outnumbering the defenders of the city. Here
and there a steam gun was silent, its gun crew dead. And presently
those that were left were useless, immobile upon the ramparts in the
rear of the attack.

* * * * *

Down in the ways of the city the fight rose to a riotous clamor. At
Tommy's order the women of the city had been concentrated into a few
strong towers. The machines of the city were left undefended for a
time. A few strong patrols of fighting men, strategically placed,
flung themselves with irresistible force upon certain bands of
maddened Ragged