Yet during those seconds was the real might, the real power for utter devastation, of Moyen fully exposed! * * * * * The amphibians got under way as the airplanes of the Americas swept into the fight. From the sides of the monsters licked out those golden tongues of flame--and from the front. Half a dozen amphibians slipped into New York from the harbor side and started into the heart of the city. And between the time when Maniel had said he was ready and the moment when he made his first active move against Moyen, a half-dozen skyscrapers vanished into nothingness, the spots where they had stood swept as clear of debris as though the land had never been reclaimed from Nature! None was ever destined to know how many lives were lost in that first attack of the monsters of the golden, myriad tongues; but the monsters struck in the midst of a working day when the skyscrapers were filled with office workers. And resolve struck deep into the hearts of the Secret Agents: if Moyen were turned back, he must be made to pay for the slaughter. A matter of seconds.... * * * * * Then a moment of deathly silence as Munson gave way at the screen for the gnomelike little Professor Maniel. "Now, gentlemen!" snapped Maniel. "If my theory is correct," manipulating instruments with lightning speed as he talked, "the reversion of the principle of my Vibration-Retarder--which captures vibrations speeding outward from the earth and transforms them once again into sound and pictures audible and visible to the human ear--this apparatus will disintegrate the monsters as our boats and planes were disintegrated! "In this I have even been compelled to manipulate in the matter of time! I must not only defeat and annihilate the minions of Moyen, but must work from a mathematical absurdity, so that at the moment of impact that moment itself must become part of the past, sufficiently remote to remove the monsters at such distance from the earth that not even the mighty genius of Moyen can return them!" The whirring, gentle as the whirring of doves' wings. In the center of the picture on the screen were those half-dozen amphibians laying waste Manhattan. Maniel set his intricate, delicate machinery into motion. Instantly the amphibians there seemed to become misty, shadowy, and to lift out of Manhattan up above the roof-tops of skyscrapers still remaining, nebulous and wraithlike as ghost-shrouds--yet swinging outward from the earth with speed almost too swift for the eye to detect. But where the amphibians had rested there stood, reclined--in all sorts of postures, surprising and even a bit ridiculous--the men of Moyen who had operated the monsters of Moyen! * * * * * From the Central Radio tower went forth a mighty voice of command to the planes which had been engaging the aero-subs off the coast. "Slay! Slay!"