hat giant
projector--"

But Tolla was standing frozen, with all her anger gone and horror at
what she had said flooding her.

"What do you mean, Tolla?" insisted Jane, seizing her. "What could
you do with that giant projector?"

"Let me go!" Tolla tried to jerk away.

"I won't let you go! Tell me what you were going to say!"

"Let me go!" Tolla got one hand loose and struck Jane in the face.
But Jane again seized the wrist. In the scuffle they overturned a
chair.

"I won't let you go until you--"

And then Tako, Don and I, hearing the uproar, burst in upon them.
Jane let go her hold, and Tolla broke into sobs, and sank to the
floor.

And both of them were sullen and silent under our questioning.

CHAPTER X

_Weird Battleground!_

"We have it going very well," said Tako, chuckling. "Don't you think
so? Sit here by me. We will stay here for a time now."

Tako had a small flat rock for a table. On it he had spread his
paraphernalia for this battle--if battle it could be called. Weird
contest! Opposing forces, each imponderable to the other so that no
physical contact had yet been made. Tako sat at his rock; giving
orders to his leaders who came hurrying up and were away at his
command; or speaking orders into his sound apparatus; or consulting
his charts and co-ordinates, questioning Don and me at times over
the meaning of shadowy things we could see taking place about us.

A little field headquarters our post here might have been termed.[8]

[8] The detailed nature of the scientific devices Tako used
in the handling of his army during the attack never has been
disclosed. I saw him using one of the eye-telescopes. There
was also a telephonic device and occasionally he would
discharge a silent signal radiance--a curious intermittent
green flare of light. His charts of the topography of New
York City were to me incomprehensible
hieroglyphics--mathematical formula, no doubt; the
co-ordinates of altitudes and contours of our world-space in
its relation to the mountainous terrain of his world which
stood mingled here with the New York City buildings.

We were grouped now around Tako on a small level ledge of rock. It
lay on a broken, steeply ascending ramp of a mountainside. The
mountain terraces towered back and above us. In front, two hundred
feet down, was a valley of pits and craters; and to the sides a
tumbled region of alternating precipitous cliffs