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But those high-pressure boys were nobody's fools. They realized that as time went on the amphibians would get further and further ahead of them in development, so they let themselves be conquered, learned how to use the Nevians' tools and everything else they could get hold of, developed a lot of new stuff of their own, and now they're out to wipe the amphibians off the slate completely, before they get too far ahead of them to handle."
The iron-driven generators of his shielding screens handled with ease the terrific load of the Nevians' assault, his polycyclic screens were proof against any material projectile, and the machines supplying his offensive beams with power were more than equal to their tasks.
Where are the Nevians? How much time we got yet?" "Not enough, I'm afraid. By the looks of things they will be within range of us in a couple of hours, and you're so far away yet that it took our voices four minutes and about fifty seconds to make the round trip, on the ultra! Play that on your calculator, Lyman! You haven't even touched our detector screen yet.
Then, all the attention of the Nevians and the greater part of their power output devoted to the neutralization of that last desperate thrust, the metal wall of the planetoid opened and the First Section shot out into space.
Costigan traced it; and there, almost dead ahead of them, between them and their sun, nearing them at the incomprehensible rate of the sum of the two vessels' velocities, came another cruiser of the Nevians! "Must be the sister-ship, coming back from our System with a load of iron," Costigan deduced.
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.
Ship after ship of the Nevians plunged toward the speedster in desperately suicidal attempts to ram her down, but each met the same flaming fate before its mass could collide with the ship of the Terrestrials. Then, from the grouped submarines far below, there reached up red rods of force, which seized the space-ship and began relentlessly to draw her down. "What are they doing that for, Conway?
But they both are, after all, remote cousins of Terra's humanity, and we get along with them quite well whenever we are compelled to visit Mars or Venus. But the Nevians The horizontal, flat, fish body is not so bad, even supported as it is by four, short, powerful, scaly, flat-footed legs; and terminating as it does in the weird, four-vaned tail.
And that same battle was being watched, also with intense interest, by the Nevians. "It is indeed a blood-thirsty combat," mused Nerado at his observation plate. "And it is peculiar or rather, probably only to be expected from a race of such a low stage of development that they employ only ether-borne forces.
They hurried down corridors, up ramps, and along hallways, with Costigan's spy-ray investigating the course ahead for chance Nevians. Bradley and Clio were unarmed, but the secret agent had found a piece of flat metal and had ground it to a razor edge.
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