"Because obviously they have not penetrated our scout lines. See that line of observers nearest the dome itself. They're all busy with their desk plates. They're in communication with the scout line. The scout line broadcast is still in operation. It looks as though the line is still unpierced, but the tribesmen's rockets are sailing over and falling this side of it." All through the night the barrage continued. At times it seemed to creep closer and then recede again. Finally it withdrew, pulling back to the American lines, to alternately advance and recede. At last I went to sleep. The Han officer seemed to be a relatively good-natured fellow, for one of his race, and he promised to awake me if anything further of interest took place. He didn't though. When I awoke in the morning, he gave me a brief outline of what had happened. It was pieced together from his own observations and the public news broadcast. CHAPTER XII The Mysterious "Air Balls" The American barrage had been a long distance bombardment, designed, apparently, to draw the Han disintegrator ray batteries into operation and so reveal their positions on the mountain tops and slopes, for the Hans, after the destruction of Nu-Yok, had learned quickly that concealment of their positions was a better protection than a surrounding wall of disintegrator rays shooting up into the sky. The Hans, however, had failed to reply with disintegrator rays. For already this arm, which formerly they had believed invincible, was being restricted to a limited number of their military units, and their factories were busy turning out explosive rockets not dissimilar to those of the Americans in their motive power and atomic detonation. They had replied with these, shooting them from unrevealed positions, and at the estimated positions of the Americans. Since the Americans, not knowing the exact location of the Han outer line, had shot their barrage over it, and the Hans had fired at unknown American positions, this first exchange of fire had done little more than to churn up vast areas of mountain and valley. The Hans appeared to be elated, to feel that they had driven off an American attack. I knew better. The next American move, I felt, would be the occupation of the air, from which they had driven the Hans, and from swoopers to direct the rocket fire at the city itself. Then, when they had destroyed this, they would sweep in and hunt down the Hans, man to man, in the surrounding mountains. Command of the air was still important in military strategy, but command of the air rested no longer in the air, but on the ground.