"The nights are lengthening in the south. The days are lengthening in the north." He made me mark it all on the map; the changes of daylight and darkness, and the approximate climate from now until early October, when the North Pole would point to the sun. Then it would be all heat and daylight in the north, shading to equatorial twilight, down to the night and cold of the southern hemisphere. "My campaign may run until then," he said. "It is these months I am mos' interes' in." He added abruptly, "Where would you advise me to land?" * * * * * It was my opening. "That depends on many things--there's a great deal you'll have to tell me, Graff," I said frankly. I smiled. "You can't have a council of war, with your chief councillor wholly ignorant of everything." "Ver' true, Peter. I will tell you what you want to know." My heart leaped with exultation. I had his confidence at last! "Our weapons," I said. My first inclusion of myself with him! He took it without notice. "Our weapons. Our method of warfare. What countries we think best to attack first. We'll have the whole world against us, you know." "I know it." "Our defense--" "That is simple, Peter. We have only one, but it is impregnable against anything they have on earth." "The crimson barrage?" "Yes." "Can you lay it over a widespread area? How wide? Graff, is it your idea to capture a great spread of country--devastate it--" "I cannot," he said. "I can include within the barrage an area that you would call a circle of ten-mile diameter. Four such circles, if I wish to divide my forces. Not much more." He described how his batteries supplied projectors of the crimson light. It would extend some fifty thousand feet into the air and sidewise some five hundred feet on each side of its source. A projector thus must be set about every thousand feet. He had enough of them to include four ten-mile areas. His storage batteries would last, he said, for continuous use some three months. "I can stand the barrage up into the air, or tilt it forward, level with the ground--it is then a beam which will annihilate what it touches--" "With about fifty thousand feet--ten miles--effective range," I finished. "Exactly so, Peter. But with it in that horizontal position we have a barrage height of only five hundred feet. It is my plan to select a base, in some area not ver' crowded. From there we can move within our barrage over any area of country we wish to take." "Move how, Graff? On land? Sea?" "And in the air--over land and sea. We can mount the barrage projectors on our platforms. They will fly; and they will float upon earth's 'water'--I have made sure of that." We discussed it for another hour. Midnight came; Zetta served us with food and hot drink. Graff was planning to destroy what he could of earth until such time as the leading governments would acknowledge his supremacy.