thunderclap. The air rocked me, hurled me sidewise; the brief roar was deafening.

"A thunder-thrower!" Venta gasped as she clung to me.

In the cataclysm of air the cloud of Midges was hurled into chaos, their bodies knocked together, whirling end over end, some of them dropping with broken wings.

Just a few seconds, and now the blue-white starlit night had been transformed into a chaos of glaring light and roaring, clapping sound. Flares were bursting everywhere; the cracking thunderclaps came one upon the other in a chaos of prismatic horror. Curtmann's hand-flashes were stabbing recklessly up through it. One of longer range burned a wide swath with the bodies of Midges bursting into a myriad pin-points of light.

In the rocking turmoil I heard Jim shouting, "Good God, we can't stay up here!"

Half our Midges already were gone! Everywhere little broken dots were drifting or falling down.

"Down!" I shouted. "Venta—Meeta—tell them! Everyone down. Don't come back up—everyone for himself, now!"

Downward plunged the weird armada.

In the roaring chaos of pyrotechnic glare what was left of our Midges swooped to the attack. With the rocket-streams at last righting my whirling body, head down I plummeted. The glare from above revealed Curtmann's men far more plainly now. Everywhere the men were staggering. In the cart some of them had fallen, but others were still erect, frantically working the projectors and stabbing with the hand heat-flashes. Our Midges were among them now, desperate fluttering little figures, stabbing at their faces. On the ground some of the staggering men were trying to get into the forest underbrush. I plummeted toward a group of them.

I hit the ground in the midst of a staggering group, with a thump that all but knocked the breath from me. Two of the men staggered at me. I was unarmed. My fist knocked one down, and I gripped the other as he half fell upon me. He was still clutching his flash-gun. I seized it, knocked him away and rose again into the roaring tumult of the air.

"Art! You got a gun? So did I."

Jim was here with me; side by side we rose. I saw the cart directly underneath me. His figure painted lurid, the desperate Curtmann was still erect. Almost the last one now. And I saw that he was struggling with a projector which had 

 Prev. P 24/25 next