A group of our engineers threw themselves headlong toward a cave across the valley, where they had rigged out a powerful electrono plant operating from atomic energy. And a few moments later the little portable receiver, the Intelligence Boss used to pick up the enemy messages, began to emit such ear-splitting squeals and howls that he shut it off. Our heterodyne or "radio-scrambling" broadcast had gone into operation, emitting impulses of constantly varying wave-length over the full broadcast range and heterodyning the Han communications into futility. In a little while our scouts came leaping down the valley from the north, and our air balls now were hovering above the Han lines, operators at the control boards near-by painstakingly picking up the pictures of the Han squads struggling down the valleys with their comparatively clumsy weapons. As fast as the air-ball scopes picked out these squads, their operators, each of whom was in ultronophone communication with a girl long-gunner at some spot in our line, would inform her of the location of the enemy unit, and the latter, after a bit of mathematical calculation, would send a rocket into the air which would come roaring down on, or very near that unit, and wipe it out. But for all of that, the number of the Han squads were too much for us. And for every squad we destroyed, fifty advanced. And though the lines were still several miles apart, in most places, and in some cases with mountain ridges intervening, the Han fire control began to sense the general location of our posts, and things became more serious as their rockets too began to hiss down and explode here and there in our lines, not infrequently killing or maiming one or more of our girls. The men, our bayonet-gunners, had not as yet suffered, for they were well in advance of the girls, under strict orders to shoot no rockets nor in any way reveal their positions; so the Han rockets were going over their heads. * * * * * The Hans in the valleys now were shooting diagonal barrages up the slopes toward the ridges, where they suspected we would be most strongly posted, thus making a cross-fire up the two sides of a ridge, while their heavy batteries, somewhat in the rear, shot straight along the tops of the ridges. But their valley forces were getting out of alignment a bit by now, owing to our heterodyne operations. I ordered our swoopers, of which we had five, to sweep along above these ridges and destroy the Han batteries. Up in the higher levels where they were located, the Hans had little cover. A few of their small rep-ray ships rose to meet our swoopers, but were battered down. One swooper they brought to earth with a disintegrator ray beam, by creating a vacuum beneath it, but they did it no serious damage, for its fall was a light one. Subsequently it did tremendous damage, cleaning off an entire ridge.