"What will they do?" I murmured. But no one answered me, and soon I was answered by the scene itself. From both sides--Thone's army and Brutar's--little waves of the Thought-substance were flowing out over that segment between the opposing rings. Like slow-floating wisps of grey smoke from the heads of the fighters. Flowing across the space between the lines. Materializing steadily. Solidifying until I could almost imagine it might become a grey wall. But this was an illusion. It was merely thought-antagonistic which would grip and hold like a net, no more. The two opposing streams met in the center of that circular No-man's land between the lines. A chaos of blurred formless color was there. Not grey now. An angry red. The visible substances holding each other immovable. A boiling cauldron of red, with livid, lurid tongues like flame darting from it. No sound. But I could feel it. A mental distress, as even at this distance its influence swept me. An uneasiness; a depression; a vague sense within me of a growing panic. It seemed a deadlock. And then began movement; strategic movement. From one portion of his line Thone suddenly withdrew a number of his thinkers. They came sweeping around to our side. With this reinforcement we became stronger over here, and the red chaos surged inward. I saw it flow almost to engulf the crouching Brutar fighters who were here opposing it. Saw a few of them fall--ghostly shells lying inert--and above them a something luminous, the Ego-mind deranged, unhinged, hovering, then winging away into death.... A shape hurriedly approached us; a man with harried, anxious face. "Thone! We are too weak now upon the other side. The Red Death is almost upon us there! They want the thinkers back." Thone ordered them back. He turned to me. "We will win, Rob." But I could not see it so. "Look!" He gestured. "There is a haze above the red. It passes inward--can't you see that? And they cannot stop it. They have not been trained, for they do not know what it is." Above the red seething ring, where the opposing thoughts were meeting, I saw as he said, a haze. It seemed a dim purple. It was floating up and inward. Very tenuous, hardly to be noticed. An imponderable something. Thone said, "A quality of our thought which they cannot combat since they do not know what it is--or realize perhaps its presence. But its influence will reach them in time." He swung upon the attentive shapes near us. "Ohl--give orders not to hasten. Hold the deadlock. Keep them there. Do not hasten. We must drive up the others if we can. Brutar and the others--" Brutar! His few picked men down there in New York working death and destruction! I had forgotten them completely. Thone issued other orders. "If thoughts of distress come from here--let the thoughts out. They may reach Brutar--bring him back to help his battle here. Let out their thoughts that way." He gestured toward New York. "And if we drive Brutar and his men up here, let them in."