ould be pure
poison for us, the way we are fixed now. Can you see any of them?"

"Not yet. Too far away to make out details. They're certainly having a
hot time down there, though, in that one spot."

They dropped lower, toward the stronghold which was being so stubbornly
defended by the inhabitants of the third planet of the fourteenth sun,
and so savagely attacked by the Kondalian forces.

"There, we can see what they're doing now," and DuQuesne anchored the
vessel with an attractor. "I want to see if they've got many of those
space-ships in action, and you will want to see what war is like, when
it is fought by people, who have been making war steadily for ten
thousand years."

Poised at the limit of clear visibility, the two men studied the
incessant battle being waged beneath them. They saw not one, but fully a
thousand of the globular craft high in the air and grouped in a great
circle around an immense fortification upon the ground below. They saw
no airships in the line of battle, but noticed that many such vessels
were flying to and from the front, apparently carrying supplies. The
fortress was an immense dome of some glassy, transparent material,
partially covered with slag, through which they saw that the central
space was occupied by orderly groups of barracks, and that round the
circumference were arranged gigantic generators, projectors, and other
machinery at whose purposes they could not even guess. From the base of
the dome a twenty-mile-wide apron of the same glassy substance spread
over the ground, and above this apron and around the dome were thrown
the mighty defensive ray-screens, visible now and then in scintillating
violet splendor as one of the copper-driven Kondalian projectors sought
in vain for an opening. But the Earth-men saw with surprise that the
main attack was not being directed at the dome; that only an occasional
ray was thrown against it in order to make the defenders keep their
screens up continuously. The edge of the apron was bearing the brunt of
that vicious and never-ceasing attack, and most concerned the desperate
defense.

For miles beyond that edge, and as deep under it as frightful rays and
enormous charges of explosive copper could penetrate, the ground was one
seething, flaming volcano of molten and incandescent lava; lava
constantly being volatilized by the unimaginable heat of those rays and
being hurled for miles in all directions by the inconceivable power of
tho