He was conscious of the dark outlines of the barge rushing up at him. He fired his jet of flame; though he did not know it then, he had fired too soon. The flames fell short. A downward thrust of his cylinder power forced him upward. He barely missed the wire caging as his body shot over it, past it. The magnet's scream was deafening. The Noths on the barge had fired a small thunderbolt between the wires, but had missed the swiftly passing mark. Loto's momentum carried him a hundred feet or more beyond the barge. The magnet stopped him, drew him swiftly back. He was turning over now; he had lost control of himself. The sea, the sky, the approaching barge were mingled in whirling confusion. He knew he could never escape; he must strike the magnet with his flame, this time or never. A moment more and he would be electrocuted against the cage. A tiny bolt cracked past him. He turned over again, righted himself momentarily, and fired. The electrical scream died into abrupt silence; the flames had caught the magnet, burned out its coils. Released suddenly, Loto's body shot upward with the pull of his cylinder. The cage, with flames spreading under it, dropped away beneath him. He righted himself, and at a distance of about three hundred feet, hung poised in the air. The flames spread over the barge; a few Noth figures plunged frantically into the water. Loto mounted upward to join his comrades. Barely seventy-five of the original three hundred and twenty-eight, were left. Ten of them were girls. Loto found Azeela safe. George still carried Dee in his arms. The flames from the burning barges died out; the silent moonlit channel was strewn with floating bodies. It seemed almost futile to search for their wounded, but they descended, and for a time moved about near the surface. They found two still alive--one burned, the other, a girl, mangled by a flying knife. Silently, with their burdens, they took their way back through the air to the cavern. It was a night of confusion. The Noths were clustered around Orleen, waiting for the dawn before they entered the city. They were still coming across the channel on swimming dogs. All night they came. The puny garrison at the Orleen cavern was powerless to stop them. It exhausted its bolts and began sending out calls for help. The Bas around Anglese City were mobilizing with their dogs. Hastily, Fahn equipped them with weapons--hand thunderbolts and flame projectors. An hour-and-a-half before dawn, they were ready to start their almost hopeless attempt to stem the horde of invaders who now held the entire western end of the island. The little rag-end of the aerial army that returned from the battle was exhausted, but in a few hours, it too, was ready to start. Fahn, with his two daughters, and Rogers, Loto and George, took the Frazia plane. On its platform Fahn mounted a single projector, the most powerful he possessed.