"Great Cat!" Far off in space, Brandon turned from his visiray screen and wiped his brow. "Czuv certainly chirped it, Perce, when he called those things flying fortresses. But who, what, why, and how? We didn't see any apparatus that looked capable of generating or handling those beams--and of course, when they got started, their screens cut us off at the pockets. Wish we could have made some sense out of their language--like to know a few of their ideas--find out whether we can't get on terms with them some way or other. Funny-looking wampuses, but they've got real brains--their think-tanks are very evidently full of bubbles. If they have it in mind to take us on next, old son, it'll be just ... too ... bad!" "And then some," agreed Stevens. "They've got something--no fooling. It looks like the hexans are going to get theirs, good and plenty, pretty soon--and then what? I'd give my left lung and four front teeth for one long look at their controls in action." "You and me both--it's funny, the way those green ray-screens stick to the walls, instead of being spherical, as you'd expect ... should think they'd _have_ to radiate from a center, and so be spherical," Brandon cogitated. "However, we've got nothing corkscrewy enough to go through them, so we'll have to stand by. We'll stay inside whenever possible, look on from outside when we must, but all the time picking up whatever information we can. In the meantime, now that we've got our passengers, old Doctor Westfall prescribes something that he says is good for what ails us. Distance--lots of distance, straight out from the sun--and I wouldn't wonder if we'd better take his prescription." The two Terrestrial observers relapsed into silence, staring into their visiray plates, searching throughout the enormous volume of one of those great fortresses in another attempt to solve the mystery of the generation and propagation of the incredible manifestations of energy which they had just witnessed. Scarcely had the search begun, however, when the visirays were again cut off sharply--the rapidly advancing main fleet of the hexans had arrived and the scintillant Vorkulian screens were again in place.