The men in front were marching on. Orders were being roared at the harnessed Midges. The cart went into motion. And the Forest City certainly was no more than a few miles ahead. Curtmann's murderous band would be there in an hour or two.

But still I hesitated to give the signal.

Little Meeta hovered before me. "The Master-God will order us down now?" she pleaded. "We will serve you well."

My heart was pounding. I nodded, with a lump in my throat that choked my voice as I shouted the signal sending so many of them to die.

A designated quarter of them swooped down. From up at this height, Venta, Jim and I hovered, with the rest of the Midges in a gathered group around us. All of us staring down.

The cloud of some five hundred Midges swooped, circled, and then plummeted. For a second or two the startled Curtmann men merely seemed to stare upward. Then the Midges were upon them, fluttering into their faces, jabbing at them. The men's arms wildly failed to fend off the viciously attacking little bodies.

Some of the Midges were caught, bashed into pulp and hurled away with a single flailing blow. Some were caught in huge hands, squeezed to death and flung to the ground. The oaths of the startled men came up, mingled with the cries of the Midges, then the tiny fluttering shapes were rising again. A shot stabbed at them, its crackling bolt stabbing through a group of them. It was like a monstrous blow-torch stabbing into fluttering moths. It left a trail of wisps of light as their bodies were consumed.

The rest of them came up and joined us, panting, flopping.

"Good enough," Jim murmured. "Five minutes more and we'll see what really happened."

But I was cold inside. No more than half the Midges had come back. Two hundred or more of them gone already. And here in the air, some of them, wounded, were bravely struggling not to fall.

The men and the huge cart down in the glade had started forward again. Suddenly it was apparent that the harnessed lines of Midges on the ground were in revolt. They milled in confusion, struggling to cast off the lines that held them. We heard Curtmann roaring threats at them. And then he fired a bolt horizontally through them. It cut a ghastly swath; a burst of trailing little wisps of fire. Beside me, Venta gasped in horror; and Jim murmured,

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