explosive the two cones ground implacably onward, their every
offensive weapon centered upon the fast-receding exposed ends of the
hexan fortress. Their bombs and torpedoes ripped and tore into the
structure beneath the invulnerable shield and exploded, demolishing
and hurling aside like straws, the walls, projectors, hexads and vast
mountains of earth. Their terrible rays bored in, softening, fusing,
volatilizing metal, short-circuiting connections, destroying life
far ahead of the point of attack; and, drawn along by the relentlessly
creeping composite tractor beam, there progressed around the circumference
of the hexan city two veritable Saturnalia of destruction--uninterrupted,
cataclysmic detonations of sound and sizzling, shrieking, multi-colored
displays of pyrotechnic incandescence combining to form a spectacle
of violence incredible.

But the heptagons could not absorb nor radiate indefinitely those
torrents of energy, and soon one greenishly incandescent screen went
down. Giant shells pierced the green metal walls, giant beams of force
fused and consumed them. Faster and faster the huge heptagon became a
shapeless, flowing mass, its metal dripping away in flaming gouts of
brilliance; then it disappeared utterly in one terrific blast as some
probing enemy ray reached a vital part. The cone did not pause nor
waver. Many of its component units would go down, but it would go
on--and on and on until every hexan trace had disappeared or until
the last Vorkulian heptagon had been annihilated.

In one of the lowermost heptagons, one bearing the full brunt of the
hexan armament, Kromodeor reared upright as his projector controls
went dead beneath his hands. Finding his communicator screens likewise
lifeless, he slipped to the floor and wriggled to the room of the Chief
Power Officer, where he found Wixill idly fingering his controls.

"Are we out?" asked Kromodeor, tersely.

"All done," the Chief Power Officer calmly replied. "We have power left,
but we cannot use it, as they have crushed our screens and are fusing
our outer walls. Two out of seven chances, and we drew one of them. We
are still working on the infra band, over across on the Second's board,
but we won't last long...."

* * * * *

As he spoke, the mighty fabric lurched under them, and only their quick
and powerful tails, darting in lightning loops about the bars, saved
them from being battered to death against the wall