e figure, held high in
the huge paws, writhed and tossed, to no avail.

The sergeant reached the nearest tripod. His brawny arms flexed;
straightened. The German swept up and over the head of the operator,
and dropped in front of the machine. Then--he vanished. Nothing,
absolutely nothing, was there between projector and rapidly retreating
wall!

A horrible retching tore my stomach; I swayed dizzily. The utter
brutality, the finality of the thing! "And any more of you carrion
that I catch slacking will get the same thing," the Russian said.
"You, Renaud, I've got my eye on you. Watch out!" The sergeant's voice
rasped through the mist about me. I shoved my shoulder under one end
of an eight by eight and plunged into the back breaking labor. But one
thought hammered at my reeling brain: "The _New York_! That's what
happened to her!"

* * * * *

The long hours of toil at last ended. We were again in the entrance
cavern, waiting for the elevator platform. It was unaccountably
delayed: the last batch had gone up fifteen minutes before. The men
about me chafed and swore. They were impatient for mess and bed.

Bit by bit I had reconstructed all the elements of this unprecedented
operation. The ray, the blasting ray that whiffed into non-existence
all that it touched, was the keynote. The great plain had been cleared
by the ray. The dim shapes floating high in that far-circling ellipse
were pouring down the dreadful vibrations, thus holding back the sea
in a marvelous green wall. I remembered the sea-monster that had
dashed at me and vanished. That proved it. The dome of cloud was
camouflage, or the product of the processes of destruction going on
underneath: it didn't matter. What mattered was that it was interlaced
by a network of ray beams. It was an impenetrable wall, a perfect
defense. Boxed in on all sides by such a barrier, how was I to get out
word of the menace? How was it to be combatted even if our forces knew
of the danger? A hundred plans flooded my wearied brain, to be
rejected one by one.

A mocking, ribald cheer arose from the men around me. The platform was
ascending. Why the long delay? A premonition of disaster chilled me. I
shrugged it aside.

We were at the top. A long line of soldiers curved about the mouth of
the pit. The next shift waiting to go down? No--they made no move to
approach. And each one was holding his ray-tube at the ready. This was
the guard. At a ta