Then this first raid was over. The Mephistans retreated and were gone in seconds, leaving the massed flight of the Terran Space Patrol with nothing to fight. They landed once again. It was but a pattern for the days that followed. Regularly every thirty-one hours, twelve minutes, and eight seconds, a horde of Mephistans dropped down upon their third moon with all projectors blazing and then fled before the Terrans could take the initiative against them. It happened seven times this way, and then as the Terrans established the regularity of the attack, the Mephistans shifted the time, leaving the Terrans standing at their positions awaiting the order to go. Ten hours passed with no attack, and then Maynard ordered his men to relax. The wave of destruction came one hour later, and it was the same as before. The next time came within ten hours after the delayed fight, and the one after that waited until the Terrans were almost exploding with anticipation before it came. Three came within one day, and then nothing for a solid week. Maynard swore and prowled his office in the _Orionad_. He lost sleep and worried ten pounds away. Then he ordered the _Orionad_ outside of the barrier and contacted Sahara Base in person. "Donigan?" he stormed. "When are the replacements coming?" "Soon," said Space Marshal Donigan. "That isn't good enough!" retorted Maynard. "This is no pink tea, Donigan. This is a matter of life and death. We have the moonlet you wanted for a base--we've had it for three weeks of sheer hell--and you say 'Soon.' With what I've got left I can't even make a stab back. It's no fun fighting a purely defensive fight, Donigan. You never know when the devils will hit, and my men are tired of being surprised in their beds." "Do they do that all the time?" asked Donigan, thinking to chide Guy for exaggeration. "About seven times out of ten. We may not know them, Donigan, but somehow they know us--all about us." "What do you want?" "Men, ordnance, materiel, hospital units, doctors, nurses, ships, and planet-fighters." "Guy, you aren't going to blast the planet itself?" "I sure am. At least I can make the fight come when I want it. This way, they'll blast us off of Three in another two weeks." "You'll get them. They should be there now." Maynard returned to the moonlet in hope--and he was watching the sky when the Mephistans hit. Out of the black sky came a downpour of deadly torpedoes. They burst among the barracks, and though their detonations did no harm in the ultrathin atmosphere of Mephisto III, the fragmentation shot the shelters full of holes and the trapped Terran air escaped. Men died in their sleep, that night, and the Mephistans covered the moonlet in sub-ships of their own devising. "Sub-ships!" breathed Maynard.