Their blue bolts spat at the blackness. The shock of it could be seen for miles in the blue flower. The shield blackened in scattered spots. Where every black spot showed, the bolts from the Earth ships lashed. The terrible power unleashed inside the shield began to show as the flower shrunk back into itself. The ground smoked and trembled as it emerged from the retreating force field; great fissures opened and the ground trembled and shook as if in the grip of an earthquake. Wing snapped a halt order to the captains on either side of him and the word moved rapidly down the line. Bracing themselves against the shock of the quake, they waited. It wasn't for long.

In the brightening day ahead of them, on the leveled plain behind them, the Earthmen saw the shadow-things approaching, their power bolts lashing out ahead of them. Every other man turned, so that half of them faced the shadows ahead and half the shadows behind.The powder guns crashed, and the steel and lead and copper pellets whined a song of death in the ranks of the shadows. The mist things exploded and disappeared as the multi-shaped spawn of Dead-Eye's Elizabeth struck their shields. Like puncturing a kid's balloon with a needle, Curt Wing thought. He was laughing now--man had risen once again from the dust. No longer need he despair. He had been stopped only momentarily in his climb toward destiny. After this unbelievable enemy, the Mercurians would be, perhaps not simply, but finally, hurled back to their hell-pot planet.

It was a tired and weary Curt Wing who threaded his way through the smoking ash of what had been one of the mightiest of Earth cities. He moved toward the church, which stood so remarkably untouched by the tremendous forces which had been unleashed within the blue flower. The two powder-burned and dirty spacemen who flanked the steel portals saluted him as he walked tiredly up the stone steps.

"Who phoned me?" Wing asked. The redhead at the left of the portal saluted. "I did, Commander. Jack and I saw this thing and we peeked inside and saw that funny light, so we thought we'd better call you."

Wing moved through the steel portals, stood in the quiet hush of the church. There, just before the altar rail was the curious blue light--like a hexagon of blue. He walked slowly toward it and as he approached, the altar behind it seemed to fade away and he was looking into a silver hallway. He halted within a foot of it. It was like looking through a doorway--why, it is a doorway, the doorway to the world these invaders came from! He unsheathed the revolver, spun the cylinder to see that it was 

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