orce which bound
the trussed aggregation of Vorkulian fortresses to the deeply buried
intrenchments of the hexans. The gigantic composite tractor beam snapped
on and held. Inconceivably powerful as that beam was, it stretched a
trifle under the incomprehensible momentum of those prodigious masses
of metal, almost halted in their terrific flight. But the war-cone was
not quite halted; the calculations of the Vorkulian scientists had been
accurate. No possible artificial structure, and but few natural ones--in
practice maneuvers entire mountains had been lifted and hurled for miles
through the air--could have withstood the incredible violence of that
lunging, twisting, upheaving impact. Lifted bodily by that impalpable
hawser of force and cruelly wrenched and twisted by its enormous couple
of angular momentum, the hexan works came up out of the ground as a
waterpipe comes up in the teeth of a power shovel. The ground trembled
and rocked and boulders, fragments of concrete masonry, and masses of
metal flew in all directions as that city-encircling conduit of
diabolical machinery was torn from its bed.

* * * * *

A portion of that conduit fully thirty miles in length was in the air,
a twisted, flaming inferno of wrecked generators, exploding ammunition,
and broken and short-circuited high-tension leads before the hexans
could themselves cut it and thus save the remainder of their
fortifications. With resounding crashes, the structure parted at the
weakened points, the furious upheaval stopped and, the tractor beams
shut off, the shattered, smoking, erupting mass of wreckage fell in
clashing, grinding ruin upon the city.

The enormous duplex cone of the Vorkuls did not attempt to repeat the
maneuver, but divided into two single cones, one of which darted toward
each point of rupture. There, upon the broken and unprotected ends of
the hexan cordon, their points of attack lay: theirs the task to eat
along that annular fortress, no matter what the opposition might bring
to bear--to channel in its place a furrow of devastation until the two
cones, their work complete, should meet at the opposite edge of the
city. Then what was left of the cones would separate into individual
heptagons, which would so systematically blast every hexan thing into
nothingness as to make certain that never again would they resume their
insensate attacks upon the Vorkuls. Having counted the cost and being
grimly read