Up-shooting beams crossed with the Loard-vogh weapons and made the air a seething hell. Snatchers ripped the bellies out of ships, and from the ships there came answering snatchers that gouged spheroidal chunks out of the planet along with the projector crews and hurled them aside. Nuisance weapons--air torpedoes and space mines--floated freely and exploded, filling the air with flying slabs of metal. And then forty of the finest made a landing. They forced their way to the defended surface, scoured the ground beneath them with a solid curtain of energy, and scarred the countryside until nothing was left to stop them. They landed, set up a vast circle, and into the center of the circle there poured a constant stream of Loard-vogh transports. "All right!" barked Lane. "Get the heavies over!" "Heavies on the way!" "And bring up the atomic spheres." Twenty of the atomic sphere projectors came zooming over, suspended on tractors. They dropped on the circle and the tractors anchored them to the solid core of IV. The paraboloids swung over and gouged pieces out of the center of the Loard-vogh camp and let them blast loose with their atomic fire. The Loard-vogh died like flies under the terrible energy--and like flies they came on, replacing those gone. The air above the camp was seething. The ground below bubbled molten in spots. The periphery was a raving, solid mass of sheer energy. The bubble between the Loard-vogh forces and the Terrans was shimmering energy that pulsated in and out like the beating of an irregular heart. And in spite of the utter madness of trying to enter that holocaust, the Loard-vogh poured in. One man made the safety of the inner shields to every hundred that came, and that one in a hundred multiplied, added to those already there, until the shell of murderous energy swelled of its own incompressible contents of Loard-vogh material and men. The shell expanded, moved outward against the fire. The atomic spheres moved backwards, and as they moved they were silent. The Loard-vogh took advantage of the silence to shove farther. A salient fingered out-- "Cut it!" snapped Downing. "With what?" asked Hayes, the commander. "Drive in there--they're cutting off projector seven." The salient swept out, forcing Terran arms back. It curved around, swept back, and had Number Seven within the loop. The pocket closed and the bitterly contested area was a wide bulge on the edge of a circle. Another landing took place. And another, not more than a mile away. And then across the plains of Planet IV, of Procyon, there rolled endless, countless mile after mile of ground equipment. The heavy portables started to hurl their might as soon as they came in sight, and the Terrans were pinched. Pinched between an embattled circle and a closing circle. The inner circle expanded, the outer circle contracted.