With the first sight of the attraction-ships, though--a sight which I had been expecting--I had pressed quickly on two of the keys before me, and at once the great line of scout-ships that had hung high above us and on each side during all the battle so far, awaiting this emergency, were gathering swiftly high above and then leaping toward the attraction-ships! Out toward them sprang the thousand serpent-craft that had risen with the attraction-ships to guard them, and then as they met our charging scouts there was a fierce, wild struggle high above us, a struggle that was a tiny replica of the gigantic combat that was going on below. For now, as we were pulled helplessly upward, the thousands upon tens of thousands of serpent-ships beneath were rushing up to attack us, undeterred by the crumpling shafts of force that shot down to meet them, charging up with death-beams sweeping through us in great shafts of ghostly light! Swiftly, I saw, the crews of scores of ships about us were being annihilated by the whirling beams, that wiped all life from those ships, though still they drove unguided upward, pulled by the relentless grip of the attraction-ships high above. Down toward those glowing disk-ships were racing our gathered scouts but ever as they charged down the serpent-ships that guarded the attraction-craft leapt to meet them, fighting with blind courage to hold them back long enough to encompass the destruction of our main fleet below. Not for much longer could we continue in that deadly grip if we were to escape, I knew, since through ever more of our ships were sweeping the deadly beams from beneath! Then I saw one of the scout-ships high above charge down through the opposing serpent-craft in a terrific, headlong plunge, saw it smash squarely down onto one of the hovering disk-ships, and then both had buckled and collapsed, were drifting away toward the galaxy in twisted wrecks of metal. And down in the same way were plunging others of the scout-ships, a deliberate and awful self-sacrifice of their Andromedan crews; diving down with all their terrific speed and tearing through the guarding serpent-ships to crash into and destroy the glowing attraction-ships that had gripped our main fleet. A moment more and the last of the attraction-ships and the last of the serpent-ships also had vanished above us, our scout-ships perishing almost to the last one, too. But they had saved us for the moment, since now, released from that deadly grip above, our fleet was massing and swooping down in turn upon the main body of the serpent-fleet beneath us, whose beams had been slicing through us!