ks," I said thoughtfully.
"Directly over this spot. Then I'll take over.

"It isn't often," I added, "that the Service concerns itself with
economic conditions. This, however, is one of the exceptions."

"Yes, sir," said Hendricks, for the very good reason, I suppose, that
that was about all a third officer could say to his commander, under
the circumstances.

* * * * *

"Five hundred feet, sir," said Hendricks.

"Very well," I nodded, and pressed the attention signal of the
non-commissioned officer in charge of the big forward ray projector.

"Ott? Commander Hanson speaking. I have special orders for you."

"Yes, sir!"

"Direct your ray, narrowed to normal beam and at full intensity, on
the spot directly below. Keep the ray motionless, and carry on until
further orders. Is that clear?"

"Perfectly, sir." The disintegrator ray generators deepened their purr
as I turned away.

"I trust, sir, that I did the right thing in following you with the
_Ertak_?" asked Hendricks. "I was absolutely without precedent, and
the circumstances were so mysterious--"

"You handled the situation very well indeed," I told him. "Had you not
been waiting when we fought our way into the open, the nearly
invisible things on the outside might have--but you don't know about
them yet."

Picking up the microphone again, I ordered a pair of searchlights to
follow the disintegrator ray, and made my way forward, where I could
observe activities through a port.

The ray was boring straight down into a shoulder of a rocky hill, and
the bright beams of the searchlights glowed redly with the dust of
disintegration. Here and there I could see the shadowy, transparent
forms of the creatures that the self-constituted rulers of this world
had doomed to a demi-existence, and I smiled grimly to myself. The
tables would soon be turned.

* * * * *

For perhaps an hour the ray melted its way into the solid rock, while
I stood beside Ott and his crew, watching. Then, down below us, things
began to happen.

Little fragments of rock flew up from the shaft the ray had drilled.
Jets of black mud leaped into the air. There was a sudden blast from
below that rocked the _Ertak_, and the shaft became a miniature
volcano, throwing rocky fragments and mud high into the air.

"Very good, Ott," I said triumphantly. "Cease action." As I spoke, the
first light of the dawn, unnoticed until now, s