ndicated the
towering structure that had been their prison. "It has the old
connection with the underground world."

"Well, they'd better be good!" said Blake incredulously.

He was still less optimistic when the building before them showed the
coming of a file of men. They poured forth, in orderly fashion and
ranged themselves in single file along the walls.

There must be a thousand, McGuire estimated, and he wondered if the
women, too, were fighting for their own. Then, remembering Althora's
brave insistence, he knew his surmise was correct.

Each one was masked against the gas; their faces were concealed; and
each one held before him a tube of shining metal with a larger bulbous
end that rested in their hands.

"Electronic projectors," the lieutenant whispered. "Keep your eye on
the enemy, Blake; you are going to learn something about war."

The thin line was advancing now and the gas billowed about them as
they came. There were some few who dropped, where masks were
defective, but the line came on, and the slim tubes were before them
in glittering menace.

* * * * *

At a distance of a hundred feet from the first of the entrenched enemy
there was a movement along the line, as if the holders of the tubes
had each set a mechanism in operation. And before the eyes of the
Earth-men was a spectacle of horror like nothing in wars they had
known.

The barricades were instantly a roaring furnace; the figures that
leaped from behind them only added to the flames. From the steady rank
of the attackers poured an invisible something before which the hosts
of the enemy fell in huddles of flame. Those nearest were blasted from
sight in a holocaust of horror, and where they had been was a
scattering of embers that smoked and glowed; even the figures of
distant ones stumbled and fell.

The myriad fighters of the army of the red ones, when the attackers
shut off their invisible rays, was a screaming mob that raced wildly
over the open lands beyond.

Althora's hands were covering her eyes, but McGuire and Blake, and the
crowding men about them, stared in awe and utter astonishment at the
devastation that was sweeping this world. An army annihilated before
their eyes! Scores of thousands, there must be, of the dead!

The voice of Blake was husky with horror. "What a choice little bit
out of hell!" he exclaimed. "Mac, did you say they were our friends?
God help us if they're not!"

"The