It was not the ranks of half-built ships, though, nor the toiling throngs among them, that held our gaze in the vast circular clearing over which we were racing. It was the colossal shape that loomed at that clearing's center and that occupied fully half the area of its vast circle, a stupendous metal cone-structure that rose in the air before us for fully a score of miles, the diameter of its base almost as great, a gigantic, smooth-sided mountain of metal towering there above the countless ships and workers in the great clearing around it, and above the far-stretching city about that clearing. Past its side our ships were speeding, and we could see now that about it and upon it there labored other great masses of serpent-creatures, swarming in and out of the heavy doors that swung open in its sides at various levels, and laboring upon the great masses of machinery that we could glimpse inside. Some of these, we saw, were great generators like those of our ships, making it clear that the vast cone was intended to race through space. Then, as Korus Kan's keen eyes peered toward and into its interior as we flashed past, he turned toward us, startled. "It's a colossal death-beam projector!" he exclaimed. "One that can move through space like their ships--and that can stab forth a death-beam of unthinkable size! With that, when they complete it, they can wipe out all life on a whole world with a single flash of the stupendous beam!" Stunned, we gazed toward it as our ships flashed past. The tremendous cone itself was apparently complete, from vast base to the truncated, flattened tip. The generators that were to move it through space were apparently all installed, and the great hordes of serpent-workers who swarmed in it now were beginning to place in it the massed mechanisms for the production of the colossal death-beam, which would be projected up through a tremendous, hollow tube or tunnel running up from the great cone's interior to the great, round opening at its truncated tip. The terrific beam, generated in that interior, would flash out of that opening at the top in whatever direction the vast cone itself was headed in space, would flash through space with its tremendous power for immense distances, spreading out fanwise and expanding in every direction as it flashed on, until it struck the planet at which it was aimed, enveloping all that planet in its ghostly glow and wiping out instantly all life upon it! This, then, was the great weapon of irresistible power which the captured records of the serpent-creatures had mentioned! And irresistible it was, I saw now; for with it, when completed, the serpent-creatures could sally forth and with one sweep of the colossal beam destroy all fleets of space-ships opposing them by annihilating their crews, could descend upon our universe and with that same great beam wipe out all life upon world after world of our galaxy, swiftly, resistlessly, until in all our universe was left no living