I switched on the Frazier current, gripped the controls of the huge projector. If I could concentrate my thoughts enough . . . with intensity enough. I was letting them rove now, gathering strength. If I could halt that devastating black beam, and then order another attack, all our remaining forces attacking at once— In my ears suddenly was Maxite’s voice, “I’m ordering Jim to use the wind projector. Talon’s forces are making for the island. We may be able to blow them away, toward the East Channel, where our boats can get at them.” Behind me I heard the hiss and roar as the great wind projector got into action, a stream of expanding, heat-yielding electrons flung in a path over the channel surface. A roar, the hot air rising, the cold wind sweeping in; the channel was soon lashed with angry waves. It had grown very dark. Black clouds edged with lightning were coming down from the north. The thunder claps were louder. I swept low over Talon’s lines. Groups of head clustered on the ground, some mounted on the brutemen. A crowd moved about a huge black muzzle pointed diagonally upward toward Kalima. I passed close over it, a hundred feet up, but I hoped that for a moment I would not be seen in the darkness. To my right was the yellow barrage radiance along the shore. Large, bowl-like wire cages set at intervals of a hundred feet. They glowed yellow, huge pots of the spreading barrage light. Mounted heads were attending them. I dashed at one. I shouted, stood up on my swaying platform and screamed with menacing words. The heads looked up, surprised. The Frazier projector spat its intensified ray. Woodenly, the heads and the brutemen stood stricken; the pot of light went out. I passed within fifty feet of it; my fire-flash, effective at this short range, spat its tongue of blue flame. The brutemen and the heads, the pot of barrage light itself, shriveled under the blast. I swept along the barrage line, the Frazier beam preceding me. From the other side, and from below, yellow rings of fire darted up. They struck my upraised side-shield, and the bottom of the platform. I could hear the crack of the reports as they struck. The encampment was in confusion, thousands of dark, surging figures. Small, black beams swung at me, mingled with the fire-rings. A light-flare burst over my head. Shouts, a rush of dim figures to avoid me; one of my birds was struck. I cut it loose. It fell. But I was not halted; a minute or two of swift flight, the barrage went dark as I sprayed it with the Frazier beam and the blue fire. I came to the giant projector of the black ray; it shriveled, fused. Its gunners vanished under my blast. The air was acrid with metallic gases and the smell of burning human flesh. But Talon’s shoreline was dark, devastated. Another of my birds wavered; I urged them all upward. Fire-rings rocked my platform with their detonations. But I was rising. They fell away. The shouts of confusion lessened, melted beneath me.