I said casually: "The Garlands had these purple projectors?" "Of course, Peter." "And, Graff, why couldn't that be made in a larger form? A giant purple beam?" "It could. The Garlands have it." My thoughts were running tumultuously. Father, Dan, and Freddie were up there in Garla. I said, still casually: "Then the Garlands could have penetrated our barrage--neutralized it?" He smiled lugubriously. "Yes. That is what they did to me when I attack' them years ago." Graff was in a good mood this day. He showed me some of the defensive apparatus he had brought along. "I do not need it here, Peter. But I have it, jus' the same." Insulated garments which one might wear and be protected, at least partially, from the red barrage. Infra-red goggles to protect the sight; ear-grids to bar out the sound--to raise it again to the normal vibration to which our human ears are accustomed. "Why," I said, "with these one might walk through our barrage!" "Yes," he agreed, "I should not care to try it--but one might get through safely." He put them away. * * * * * We had no reports from Africa. But it was over there that in these early days the greatest damage to earth was done. The flying ring of platforms, with the vehicle in their midst, had immediately begun moving northward. Slowly some two or three hundred miles a day, but inexorably, impervious to every attack that could be sent against them, they blazed a ten-mile twisting trail, northward across Africa--a trail of queerly blank, dead-gray surface of empty earth. It was as though some giant finger of death were dragging, trailing itself over the continent. It cut a swath through Timbuktu, trailed over the newly settled, newly fertile Sahara, swung east over the mountains into the erstwhile Libyan desert; then north over the Mediterranean. It was there by July 20. A fleet of warships, hastily assembled from every nation, was in the Mediterranean. The red enemy flew high. Its barrage was downward. The ships, at a fair distance, withstood the red glow. Especially at night. The world was learning the nature of this gruesome enemy. The crimson screaming radiance seemed more deadly, more uncanny in the darkness of night. But it was not. Our sunlight was favorable to it; by day its range was greatly increased. Graff knew it. He had told me he would follow the daylight northward! The great steel ships in the Mediterranean--if they kept off several miles--were safe, especially at night. Safe from annihilation! But on them must have been queer, uncanny scenes!