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There were just two restrictions on my freedom of movement. I was allowed nowhere near the power-broadcasting station on the peak, nor the complement of it which was buried three miles below the base of the mountain. And I was never allowed to approach within a hundred feet of any disintegrator ray machine when I visited the military outposts in the surrounding mountains.
"The rays, sir!" snapped the thought from Dival, like a flash of lightning. "Concentrate the beams strike at the trunks " "Right!" My orders emanated on the heels of the thought more quickly than one word could have been uttered. The six men who operated the disintegrator rays were stung out of their startled immobility, and the soft hum of the atomatic power generators deepened.
My rage was equal to his. I felt the concentrated vengeance of the earth quivering through me as I pressed the button of the disintegrator and, sweeping it rapidly up and down, saw the gigantic form that confronted me melt into nothingness. There were three other giants in the room, and they had been on the point of following up the attack of their comrade.
Directly beneath me, as I looked, was a clearing, a perfect square with rounded corners, obviously blasted out of the solid forest by the delicate manipulation of sharply focused disintegrator rays. And upon the naked, pitted surface thus exposed, side by side in orderly array, were the missing ships! I studied the strange scene with a heart that thumped excitedly against my ribs.
Swiftly the polished knob, which gleamed like an evil eye, moved round to sweep over us. Instinctively, though incautiously, we had collected in a group. A single discharge would sweep us all into eternity. A Ticklish Position. "Will no one fire upon them?" exclaimed Mr. Edison, struggling with the disintegrator in his hands, which still refused to work.
We had just had time to congratulate ourselves on the successful opening of our bombardment, and the disintegrator of the flagship was poised for another discharge, when suddenly out of the black expanse beneath, quivered immense electric beams, clear cut and straight as bars of steel, but dazzling our eyes with unendurable brilliance. It was the reply of the Martians to our attack.
Or which was perhaps most probable there might be practically no difference in the effective range of the engines. Anyhow, we were going to find out how the case stood, and that without delay. Ready with the Disintegrator.
Behind, and far above me on the mountain peak, the lights of the city gleamed and flashed, while the iridescent beams of countless disintegrator ray batteries on surrounding mountain peaks, played continuously and nervously, criss-crossing in the sky above it. Then with a swish, a line dropped out of the sky, and a little seat rested on the ground beside me.
An instant the girl gazed in speechless horror at what had been her secret lover, then she threw herself at my feet, writhing and shrieking in terror. At this moment, the elevator shot to a sudden stop behind the grill, and prepared for the worst, I faced it, disintegrator pistol raised. But I lowered the pistol at once, with a sigh of relief. The elevator was empty. For a moment I considered.
Many of the Gang Bosses were dubious about our Wyoming policy of providing our fighters with no inertron armor as protection against the disintegrator ray of the Hans. Some of them even questioned the value of all weapons intended for hand-to-hand fighting.
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