ombing, and it was while engaged in doing so
that he and his men observed a startling phenomenon.

High in the heavens, seemingly out of nothing, the mysterious globes
grew. The aviators stared, rubbed their eyes in amazement, doubted the
truth of what they saw. Their commander recollected his own words,
"Those globes don't just materialize out of thin air." But that
actually seemed to be what they were doing. Out of empty space they
leaped, appearing first as black spots, and in a moment swelling to
their huge proportions.

One pilot made the mistake of ramming a globe, which burst, and he
hurtled to earth in a shower of seed, seed which seemed to root and
grow and cover his craft with a mass of foliage even as it fell.
Horrified, ammunition and explosives exhausted, the amazed commander
ordered his ships back to Tucson. What he had to tell caused a
sensation.

"No," he said, finishing his report to the high military official who
had arrived with federal forces, "I saw nothing--aside from the
globes--that could possibly account for the attack. Nothing."

But none the less the attack went on. Though hundreds of planes scoured
the sky, though great guns bellowed day and night and thousands of
soldiers, state and federal, were under arms, still the incredible
globes continued to advance, still more and more of the countryside
came under the sway of the nightmarish jungle. And this losing battle
was not waged without loss of human life. Sometimes bodies of artillery
were cut off by globes getting beyond their lines in the darkness and
hemming them in. Then they had literally to hack their way out or
perish; and hundreds of them perished. One company sergeant told of a
thrilling race with three globes.

"It was a close thing," he said, scratching his head, "and only a third
of us made it."

Fear gripped the hearts of the most courageous of men. It was terrifying
and nerve-racking to face such an _unhuman_ foe--weird, drifting globes
and invading jungles whose very source was shrouded in mystery. Against
this enemy no weapons seemed to prevail. All the paraphernalia of
modern warfare was proving useless. And looking at each other with
white faces--not alone in Arizona, but in New York, Chicago, Los
Angeles--men asked themselves these questions, and the newspapers posed
them:

"What if this thing can't be stopped?"

"What if it keeps on and on and invades every city and state?"

"It is only startin