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The snow that fell to the boiling water below was not water, in toto; some was carbon dioxide and some oxygen chilled in the expansion of the gas. It was snowing within the dome. The falling forms of Thessians were robbed of the life-giving air pressure to which they were accustomed. But all this was visible for but an instant.
"Do you remember what Dad said about the way the Thessians made the giant forts out in space hauled matter from the moon and transformed it to lux and relux. Remember, I said then I thought it might be a ray but found it wasn't what I thought? I want to to use the ray I was thinking of. The only question in my mind is what is going to happen to us when I use it?" "What's the ray?"
"If it's none of my business, just say so," he began. "But that first city we saw the Thessians destroy it was Zezdon Fentes' home, wasn't it? Did he have a family?" The words seemed blunt as he said them, but there was no way out, once he had started. And Zezdon Afthen took the question with complete calm. "Fentes had both wives and children," he said quietly. "His loss was great."
Then the Thessian fleet found them. The coils were charged now, and they could have escaped, but Arcot had to work. The Thessians were attacked with moleculars, cosmics, and a great twin-ray. Arcot could not use his magnet, for it had been among those things severed from the control. He had two ray feeds, and the artificial matter.
Thett's men stared in horror as they recognized that thing in his hand a Thessian body! He grinned happily and reached for a battleship a ray burned him. He howled, and leaped into their midst. Then the Thessians went mad. All fought, and they fought each other, rays of all sorts, their moleculars and their cosmics, while in their midst the Giant howled his glee, and laughed and laughed
A molecular reached down from somewhere in space, hit the ray screen of Ortol, which the Thessians had attacked for hours, and the screen flashed into sudden brilliance, and disappeared. The ray struck the Thessian fort, and the fort burst into tremendous opalescence, while the invisible barrier the ray had struck was suddenly a great sheet of flaming light.
Apparently the Thessians were holding off for the present. "In a way," said Morey seriously, "it was distinctly fortunate that we were attacked almost at once. Their instantaneous system of destruction would have worked for the one shot needed to send the Ancient Mariner to eternal blazes." He laughed, but it was a slightly nervous laugh.
Taking the horror-ideas of the Thessians, he had imprinted them on Arcot's mind while Arcot was at work with the controls. In Arcot's mind, they had acted exactly as had the ideas that night on Earth, only here the demonstration had been carried to the limit, and the horror ideas were compounded to the utmost.
Many of the terrestrian, or better, Solarian ships, were equipped with space distortion apparatus, now, and had some measure of safety in that the attractive rays of the Thessians could not be so concentrated on them. In numbers was safety; Arcot had been endangered because he was practically alone at the time they attacked. But it was obvious that the Solarian fleet was losing.
The Thessians were already nearing the planet, and no possible rays could overtake them. An instantaneous touch of the space control, and the mighty ship was within hundreds of miles of the atmosphere. Space twisted about them, reeled, and was firm. The Thessian fleet was before them in a moment, visible now as they slowed to normal speed.
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