then gave it up. They realized that they had no target to shoot
at, no way of knowing whether our gunners were a few hundred feet or
several miles beyond it.

Their ultrophone men, of whom they did not have many, stood around in
tense attitudes, their helmet phones strapped around their ears,
nervously fingering the tuning controls at their belts. Unquestionably
they must have located some of our frequencies, and overheard many of
our reports and orders. But they were confused and disorganized. If they
had an Ultrophone Boss they evidently were not reporting to him in an
organized way.

They were beginning to draw back now before our advancing fire. With
intermittent desperation, they began to shoot over our barrage again,
and the explosions of their rockets flashed at widely scattered points
beyond. A few took distance "pot shots."

Oddly enough it was our own forces that suffered the first casualties in
the battle. Some of these distance shots by chance registered hits,
while our men were under strict orders not to exceed their barrage
distances.

Seen upon the ultroscope viewplate, the battle looked as though it were
being fought in daylight, perhaps on a cloudy day, while the explosions
of the rockets appeared as flashes of extra brilliance.

The two barrage lines were not more than five hundred feet apart when
the Sinsings resorted to tactics we had not foreseen. We noticed first
that they began to lighten themselves by throwing away extra equipment.
A few of them in their excitement threw away too much, and shot suddenly
into the air. Then a scattering few floated up gently, followed by
increasing numbers, while still others, preserving a weight balance,
jumped toward the closing barrages and leaped high, hoping to clear
them. Some succeeded. We saw others blown about like leaves in a
windstorm, to crumple and drift slowly down, or else to fall into the
barrage, their belts blown from their bodies.

However, it was not part of our plan to allow a single one of them to
escape and find his way to the Hans. I quickly passed the word to Bill
Hearn to have the alternate men in his line raise their barrages and
heard him bark out a mathematical formula to the Unit Bosses.

We backed off our ships as the explosions climbed into the air in
stagger formation until they reached a height of three miles. I don't
believe any of the Sinsings who tried to float away to freedom
succeeded.

But we did know later, that a