There were no signs of any men entering these ships, or the machines, so it seemed there must be some means of distant control that man knew nothing of, for it was improbable that all those men could have been in the parent machine from the beginning. No wonder the Sirians could lose these machines so freely. The ability to make them automatically from anything meant they cost practically nothing and could be produced in limitless quantity. The notion that Man was to be an easy victor was fast disappearing. These machines were coming to form an ever-growing cloud of wheeling ships. Still, man had destroyed fully half their fleet in that desperate struggle; they must spend some time in making up those losses. But Man had lost nearly a third of his great fleet. Four hundred thousand brave men had been lost. It was not even a victory, and it had cost Man far more than it had cost the Sirians. They had learned something from them, though. Perhaps radio control would enable man to do an equal amount of damage. Orders were put through to make an experimental fleet of thirty thousand radio-controlled machines. * * * * * In the meantime a new thing was attracting the attention of the people on the planets. A new set of machines was issuing from the transports. These were smaller than that first set--low and squat--but they seemed far more flexible in their movement. They went off in orderly line to a point a few miles distant from the main encampment and there formed themselves into two groups. One group remained still, but began to glow faintly, and a hum came to the televisors above. Then there began to flow from a spout on the side of each a steady stream of molten metal. This was poured into a somewhat similar arrangement on the other group, then these moved quickly away, and with their strange handlike appendages began to work quickly at a great rounded hull that was rapidly forming. The men watching understood. It was to be another cargo ship. Rapidly this hull grew under their swift manipulation, till it was completed in three and a half hours. An entire ship, except for the machinery, was completed. And now they began to work on another, and as they fell to work there started from the original cargo shops a long line of small, quick moving machines, machines that could run along the ground or drive through the air, and they were covered with arm-like appendages. Soon these reached the newly built hull, and quickly they were at work, getting material from the strange squat machines, entering the hull, and working at it. The second hull was nearly completed when one of the smaller machines flew back to the original encampment and went up to the sphere. From it it drew a strange metal case, oblong, from which led a great heavy cable. This it carried back to the now completed ship and installed it somewhere inside. Then the ship rose easily from the ground and floated around