But before our cruisers could turn, before we could halt and slant back upward, the thousands of leaping cubes from beneath were upon us! Then about us for a wild moment was conflict indescribable, colossal cubes rushing by thousands upon our hundreds of gleaming cruisers, crimson electrical bolts and black force-beams whirling and stabbing in wild destruction. Cubes thronged thick about us as our cruiser leapt upward, and then the thrumming of the force-beams of our ship sounded as they drove paths of instant devastation through the ruck of battle about us. From the speech-instrument there came above the din of battle a wild cry from Gor Han, and I saw that a crimson bolt had grazed past his cruiser's stern, warping its whole side with its terrific power and sending his craft swirling helplessly down to the world below! I cried out at that sight, then saw Najus Nar's craft slant downward even as my own struggled wildly with the cubes about it, saw the insect-man's cruiser drive right and left with force-beams, as other cubes from beneath rushed up toward it. Then as it shot downward among them to reach Gor Han's falling ship it had crashed glancingly along the side of one of the uprushing cubes, and with its prow a twisted wreck of metal was whirling down also! "Gor Han! Najus Nar!" I shouted, as I saw them fall; then a deadly bolt of blinding crimson fire flashed past our cruiser's walls, missing us only by inches; I yelled crazily as the cube above that had loosed it was driven smashingly into the battle whirl about us by our swift-leaping force-beam. But about us now our cruisers were swiftly vanishing, as the hordes of cube-ships rushed upon them! They were stabbing out with black beams to the bitter end, driving cubes down to death with those beams, yet they were fast disappearing beneath the withering hail of deadly crimson electrical bolts. But a score of cruisers remained beside me, now but a dozen, as the crimson bolts still flashed thick, Jurt Tul's ship fighting side by side with my own. Then, as but a scant five or six cruisers remained, the target of all the blasting bolts from the massed cubes about us, there penetrated through the deafening roar of battle from the speech-instrument Jurt Tul's great voice. "Back out of the comet!" he yelled. "It's our only chance, Khel Ken--to get outside until the rest of the Patrol's cruisers arrive!" I saw, even through my mad blood-lust at that moment, that he was right and that our only chance of further action lay in winning clear of the comet. "Back, then!" I cried.