ke that long for
those Petrolia to die out. We've got to get the oil out from below to
a point where they can no longer spawn. We will apply mining in other
fields--but not here!"

"Not here," Johns repeated, shuddering.

"It's up to you to see no one else tries it." Asher lit a cigarette
and nodded at Johns. "Get control of the field--anything. Tell the oil
men something. But don't tell then the truth. They wouldn't believe
you. They would call you raving mad.

"The world does not know. It would not believe. Can we do other than
remain silent?"

R. Briggs Johns, sick of thinking of the cavern world and horrible
things below them, knew they could not.

Brigands of the Moon

(The Book of Gregg Haljan)

CONCLUSION OF A FOUR PART NOVEL.

_By Ray Cummings_

CHAPTER XXXIV

_The First Encounters_

[Illustration: Like feathers we were blown with it.]

[Sidenote: The besieged Earth-men wage grim, ultra-scientific war with
Martian bandits in a last great struggle for their radium-ore--and
their lives.]

It seemed, with that first shot from the enemy, that a great relief
came to me--an apprehension fallen away. We had anticipated this
moment for so long, dreaded it. I think all our men felt it. A shout
went up:

"Harmless!"

It was not that. But our building withstood it better than I had
feared. It was a flash from a large electronic projector mounted on
the deck of the brigand ship. It stabbed up from the shadows across
the valley at the foot of the opposite crater-wall, a beam of vaguely
fluorescent light. Simultaneously the search-light vanished.

The stream of electrons caught the front face of our main building in
a six-foot circle. It held a few seconds, vanished; then stabbed
again, and still again. Three bolts. A total, I suppose, of nine or
ten seconds.

I was standing with Grantline at a front window. We had rigged an
oblong of insulated fabric like a curtain: we stood peering, holding
the curtain cautiously aside. The ray struck some twenty feet away
from us.

"Harmless!"

The men in the room shouted it with derision. But Grantline swung on
them.

"Don't think that!"

An interior signal-panel was beside Grantline. He called the duty-men
in the instrument room.

"It's over. What are your readings?"

* * * * *

The bombarding electrons had passed through the outer shell of the
building's double-wall, and been absorbed in the rarefied, magnetized