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"If it were not for the fact that there are solid asteroids of iron out beyond Mars, I would say that somebody wanted iron badly enough to wipe out the fleets and the planetoid to get it. But anyway, whoever they were, they carried enough power so that our armament didn't bother them at all.

He pressed down a tiny lever, and a robot in the power room threw in the gigantic plunger switches which launched against the Nevians the stupendous beam which so upset the complacence of Nerado the amphibian the beam into which was poured recklessly every resource of power afforded by the planetoid, careless alike of burn-out and of exhaustion.

Martin has, in the eighteen months since he came to the Belt, run up an enviable record, both as an insurance investigator and as a police detective, although his connection with the Planetoid Police is, necessarily, an unofficial one. Probably not since Sherlock Holmes has there been such mutual respect and co-operation between the official police and a private investigator."

"Don't you see?" exclaimed an excited savant. "They are the Martians!" The startling truth burst upon the minds of all. Here upon this little planetoid were several of the gigantic inhabitants of the world that we were going to attack.

The man who called himself Stanley Martin had carefully plotted the orbit of this particular planetoid and then let his spaceboat coast in without using any detection equipment except the visual. It had been necessary, but very risky. Had the people here seen his boat? If so, had they recognized it, in spite of the heavy camouflage? And, even if they only suspected, what would be their reaction?

The last vessel of the Triplanetary armada converted and the resulting metal stored away in their capacious reservoirs, the Nevians turned their attention upon the stronghold of the pirates. There ensued a battle royal. For this vast planetoid was no feeble warship, depending solely upon the limited power available in its accumulators.

And there presents itself the further question, How, during the time when it was concentrating into a planetoid, did it manage to jostle its way through all the differently-moving like masses of nebulous matter, and yet to preserve its individuality? Answers to these questions are, it seems to me, not even imaginable. Turn we now to the alternative hypothesis.

"Look here, Fred," Cleveland called his attention to the plate, upon which was pictured a horde of the peculiar inhabitants of the ghastly planet, wreaking their frenzied electrical wrath upon everything within the circle bared by Roger. "I was just going to suggest that we clean up that planetoid Roger started, but I see that the local boys are attending to it." "Just as well, perhaps.

Out of the vacuum of space a fish-shaped vessel of the void the vessel that was shortly to attack so boldly both the massed fleet of Triplanetary and Roger's planetoid plunged into the rarefied outer atmosphere, and crimson beams of force tore shriekingly the thin air as it braked its terrific speed.

Their defensive screens flared briefly, then went down; their great spherical hulls first glowing red, then shining white, then in a brief moment exploding into flying masses of red hot, molten, and gaseous metal. A full two-thirds of Roger's force was caught in that raging, incandescent beam; caught and obliterated: but the remainder did not retreat to the planetoid.