There ensued a brief but appalling demonstration of the terrible effectiveness of those Osnomian weapons against anything not protected by ultra-powered ray screens. Metal and men--if men they were--literally vanished. One moment they were outlined starkly in the beam; there was a moment of searing, coruscating, blinding light--the next moment the beam bored on into the void, unimpeded. Nothing was visible save an occasional tiny flash, as some condensed or solidified droplet of the volatilized metal re-entered the path of that ravening beam. "We'll see if there's any more of them loose," Seaton remarked, as he shut off the force and probed into the wreckage with a searchlight. No sign of life or of activity was revealed, and the light was turned upon the captive. He was held motionless in the invisible grip of the attractors, at the point where the force of those peculiar magnets was exactly balanced by the outward thrust of the repellers. By manipulating the attractor holding it, Seaton brought the strange tubular weapon into the control-room through a small air-lock in the wall and examined it curiously, but did not touch it. "I never heard of a hand-ray before, so I guess I won't play with it much until after I learn something about it." "So you have taken a captive?" asked Margaret. "What are you going to do with him?" "I'm going to drag him in here and read his mind. He's one of the officers of that ship, I believe, and I'm going to find out how to build one exactly like it. This old can is now as obsolete as a 1920 flivver, and I'm going to make us a later model. How about it, Mart, don't we want something really up-to-date if we're going to keep on space-hopping?" "We certainty do. Those denizens seem to be particularly venomous, and we will not be safe unless we have the most powerful and most efficient space-ship possible. However, that fellow may be dangerous, even now--in fact, it is practically certain that he is." "You chirped it, ace. I'd much rather touch a pound of dry nitrogen iodide. I've got him spread-eagled so that he can't destroy his brain until after we've read it, though, so there's no particular hurry about him. We'll leave him out there for a while, to waste his sweetness on the desert air. Let's all look around for the _Kondal_. I sure hope they didn't get her in that fracas." They diffused the rays of eight giant searchlights into a vertical fan, and with it swept slowly through almost a semi-circle before anything was seen. Then there was revealed a cluster of cylindrical objects amid a mass of wreckage, which Crane recognized at once. "The _Kondal_ is gone, Dick. There is what is left of her, and most of her cargo of salt, in jute bags." As he spoke, a series of green flashes played upon the bags, and Seaton yelled in relief. "They got the ship all right, but Dunark and Sitar got away--they're still with their salt!"