screens were furiously incandescent, but were still holding.

A hundred feet. Velocity appallingly high, the enemy's screens still up. Something would have to give now. If that screen stood up, the ship must surely strike it, and vanish as she did so. But Thlaskin the Chickladorian made no move nor spoke no word to hike his blast. If the skipper was willing to bet his own life on his computations, who was he to squawk? But ... was it possible that Cloud had miscalculated?

No! While the mighty vessel's driving projectors were still a few yards away the defending screens exploded into blackness. The full awful streams of energy raved directly into the structures beneath. Metal and stone glared white, then flowed—sluggishly at first, but ever faster and more mobile—then boiled coruscantly into vapor.

The cruiser slowed—stopped—seemed to hang poised. Then slowly, reluctantly, she moved upward, her dreadful exhausts continuing the devastation.

"That's computin', mister," the pilot breathed. "To figure a dive like that right on the nose an' then to have the guts to hold her cold—skipper, that's computation!"

"All yours, pilot," Cloud demurred. "All I did was give you the dope—you're the guy that made it good."

High in the stratosphere the Chickladorian cut the acceleration to a thousand and Cloud took stock.

"Hurt, anybody?" Nobody was. "QX. We'll repeat, then, on the other side of the lagoon."

And as the cruiser began to descend upon the new course the vengeful Dhilian fleet arrived upon the scene. Looping, diving, beaming, often crashing in suicidal collision, the two factions went maniacally to war. Friend and foe alike, however, avoided the plunging Tellurian ship. That monster, they had learned, was a thing about which they could do nothing.

The second fortress fell exactly as the first had fallen, and as the pilot brought the cruiser gently to ground in the middle of the shallow lake, Cloud saw that the Dhilians, overwhelmingly superior in numbers now, had cleared the air of the ships of Uhal.

"Can you fellows and your ships keep them off of my flitter while I take my readings?" he demanded.

"We can," the natives radiated, happily. Four of the armored bone-heads were wearing the semi-portables. They had them perched lightly atop 

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