One, just south of Malta, was caught in a fringe of outflung red beam. Those on board have told what for a minute or two they went through. It was night. The ship's lights went out. Its dynamos were burned. There were several explosions aboard. But the ship escaped. Its men were half deafened; eyes red, smarting and strained; a queer irritation of the skin. And many were laughing with an hysteria which no one could explain. The invaders turned east from Malta. They were never unduly aggressive, the barrage generally was closely held for defense--save that over the land it blighted always that ten-mile swath. They passed over the isles of Greece and again turned north. Heading up into mid-Europe. Before them--as well as their course could be guessed for it always was erratic--the country was deserted. A rout, with occasionally an old fortress, or a group of armed earth planes, or a railroad line with an armored train, making a brief, futile stand. During this period the few Brauns whom Graff had sent previously to earth now began to make their appearance. A few, scattered individuals; they were found in various localities, and by the earth people summarily killed. In mid-Europe a group of them--a hundred or more--suddenly appeared and made a stand. Graff's expedition rescued them, took them aboard the flying platforms. They were the last, I think, of the scattered Xenephrenes; no others ever appeared, anywhere on earth. The last week in July saw us spreading out in South America. Our permanent camp housed the women, children and the older men. They maintained the barrage. The insects were working with the men building the town. With a ring of flying platforms, we made a sortie north. A week up and back. We laid waste a swath through central Venezuela to the coast; we returned with a western swing, through Colombia, Ecuador, north Peru and back to our base. By July 30 it was evident that the earth people were doing their best to evacuate all the territory inclosed by the circle we had cut. Graff saw it; a new idea gripped him. "We can patrol it, Peter. With a few platforms I can hold this territory--and spread farther." It was an area roughly from five degrees south to seventeen degrees north latitude, and from sixty degrees to seventy-eight degrees west longitude. A small Space-flying globe was now dispatched with a message to the east. It joined Graff's other force in mid-Europe. Together they moved in one leap to the Orient, landed in Java, and began sweeping the East Indies. They attacked the rich Dutch islands near the equator, which with the new climate we Dutch had proudly thought would become the fairest places of the earth. From an island there was no swift escape for the multitudes of panic-stricken people--I have read that they flung themselves into the sea by thousands.