do is sprinkle its cargo all over Leiccsenland, and as much more of Titan as we can...."

The old horticulturist's words were cut short here, as the silvery Callistan ship that had been approaching, swept close, overhead. It had won through the outer defenses of the village. The ominous shadow of the craft, which was small but deadly, slid swiftly over the ground. Sparks of molten metal shot from the tower of the sun-ray globe, as an unseen sword-beam of intense heat lashed at its girders. Steel crumpled and snapped. There was an ugly, creaking, groaning sound, like that which a great tree makes when it begins to fall, after the lumber-jacks have severed its trunk. The tower leaned, like a man shot, and crashed with a thunderous noise onto a row of stores and houses along the street.

Fire spurted, as the great sun-ray globe of heat-resistent carbon-glass shattered, spilling its seething, white-hot contents on the wreckage. Flames lashed up, blazing furiously.

Everyone had crouched down, seeking whatever cover was available, as the enemy ship, glinting in the pale sunshine, and reflecting the glare of the conflagration, circled above. The hiss of its propelling mechanism was almost a whisper. So low that the wild, challenging laughter of the gray-furred Callistan pilot, leaning over its side, could be plainly heard.

The beam of heat that had wrecked the tower, swung downward. It hit the front of the Community Bank, and the latter's windows, with the gold lettering on them, cracked and wilted. Old Arne Reynaud, hunched now behind the stone blocks that flanked the steps, was hit. His whole back was raked by that invisible sword of concentrated heat waves. Flesh and clothing alike was burned away from his spine.

But even as this was happening, slender atom-rifles and pistols were brought into play—sobbing and whirring. Ron Leiccsen was among the other marksmen, firing with his pistol from beneath the foliage of the maple sapling, where he had drawn Anna Charles.

The swift missiles struck the invader craft. Incandescent spots, bluer and more eye-hurting than the glare of an electric arc, blotched its burnished hull. It sagged in its flight like a mass of wet paper, and plummeted to the street. From the wreck was hurled a big-chested, furry, half-human form, bloodied, and spattered with its own brains, its broken, slender limbs tangled in the wires of a house-yard fence.

Ron Leiccsen leaped to where Arne Reynaud lay on the 

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