our people into cinders and drops them, has no effect on the
Anti-Gravitational Ovoids in the skull-pans of the helmets, and without
mental direction, the Ovoids neither rise nor fall but wander aimlessly!

"See? As the fight continues, those who still live, as they dart here
and there through the battle area, will be confronted continually by the
blackened faces and shriveled figures of their departed friends,
relatives and neighbors, and will see at first hand what will happen to
themselves if they are caught by the tentacles!"

* * * * *

From the lips of Dalis came one single burst of laughter, filled with
bitterness. No other word came from his lips, no other sign. He merely
sat and stared, and masked his hell-black thoughts so that neither of
the Sarkas might read them. But in the fertile mind of Dalis a plan was
being born--a plan that, he knew, had always been growing back in his
mental depths, somewhere, down the centuries, since first he had become
an enemy of the Sarkas. The Sarkas ruled the Earth, and....

But he would spring his surprise when he believed the time right, for
Dalis possessed a faculty which neither of the Sarkas possessed--an
example of it being his incomprehensible knowledge of the secret code
of moving fingers used by Sarka and Jaska.

The Gens of Dalis drew back in consternation at this wholesale taking
off of the first line of attack. Out of that first line, comprising
perhaps a thousand families, scarcely a hundred had escaped the groping
of those mighty tentacles of the Aircars--and the black, shriveled
things which had been men floated all about the Aircars which had
destroyed them, warnings to those who followed them into the fray. Those
who had somehow escaped the wrath of the tentacles in the first
engagement fled back into the heart of the next line of sky-skirmishers,
fear and horror in their faces.

Here, answering to the will of Jaska, a mile or so above the heart of
the conflict, they reformed with their people, and prepared again to
attack. But how to attack these formidable Aircars successfully?

* * * * *

That was the question. Ray Directors had been turned against them, but
something was decidedly wrong. The first car to feel the blast of even
one of those Ray Directors should have vanished, become as nothing, as
had the body of Sarka the First before the Ray Director of Dalis.

But apparently nothing h