A great Venusian ship caught in the empurpled fog, described a parabola as it plunged out of control and a milky-white beam from the Globes caught it as if on a spear and it plunged headlong into the sea below. The titanic struggle was so appalling that even strong men accustomed to the vicissitudes of battle trembled at the sight. There was no quarter now. Extinction of one side or the other was the ultimate outcome--there could not be any other possible answer, in that fantastic hecatomb. "How much power have we?" Bill Nardon asked quietly, and his eyes, shadowed with the knowledge of the awful burden he was about to take upon himself, dwelt briefly on the expectant ones of the Military Strategist. "Enough for about six hours, if we use the Energon Screen." Nydron said it quietly and with eagerness that was like an expressed hope. "I think we can tip the balance ... don't you?" Bill glanced for an instant into the screen, where shimmering globes and the League's ships were falling into the tossing, exploding chaos that was the sea. He thought of the Martian fleet, protected by the Energon, but powerless to neutralize the Cinnabarian defenses without the Terran Dispersal Beam; of the Venusian ships, helpless in that holocaust, despite their invulnerable Vulcanite Hulls, and, with a catch in his throat, of the gallant Terran vessels, able to draw the fangs from the spheres with the Dispersal Beam, but open to the lethal power of those hellish white beams of the _Energasts_, because they did not have the Multi-Energon. But organized, they could wreak untold havoc on the enemy. "Give battle orders; we are going up. The Martians, under the protection of their Energon Screens, to get as close as possible to the globes, ready to hurl their bombs, while the Terran ships behind them, screened by the Martian Fleet, aim their Dispersal Beams to neutralize their violet power screens. Keep the Venusians and Mercurians as reserves--that roughly, should be our strategy, modify it as needed, Nydron.... We'll lead!" He gazed up into the flaming clouds where the League's Fleet and the _Energasts_ had swept upwards in coruscating swirls of intolerable radiance, and then his gaze came to rest on the golden glory of the _Aurean_ girl. "Margalida," he said softly, as if there were an ineffable magic in that name. "Almond blossom," he murmured softly to himself, as if in those few, last tragic moments, he would stamp forever the imprint of her loveliness in his heart. There was no sound. The tortured atmosphere of the planet regained a measure of peace. Only the sea remained monstrously convulsed as if striving to spew the shattered Globes and spacers now sunk beneath its waves. And on the windswept shore, only a fraction of the Inter-Planetary League's great ships had come to rest. * * * * *