"The disintegrating ray!" he murmured. "I have read of that, in fiction. But here! Here it is!" Suddenly he was all energy. "Will you use this weapon against our enemies? I assure you that you will be well rewarded. As much eka-iodine as your ship will carry! My own ship is here, in the courtyard. It is swift, and powerful. You have already learned the controls. Take it. Bring down those murderers!" The fiery meteor was coming toward them again, planting a swath of death a hundred yards wide. There was really only one answer possible. The terrestrial scientists, having come on a mission of peace and discovery, stepped forward in unison. "Give me the activator key!" Sine said crisply. "Lents, will you see that the port gaskets are loose? Kass, I'd like to have you take the controls." "Right! Right!" They ran past the governor of the greatest planet in the solar system, ignoring him, down the broad stairs, through halls of weighty magnificence, and into the rain-sluiced courtyard. The governor's ship was waiting there. Not very large, but fine. Its polished metal gleamed richly. "Quick, inside!" Sine threw open the manport valves. They were inside. The gravity buttons glowed with their peculiarly material lavender light, and the ship rose vertically with swift acceleration. From the sky the death trails left by the invaders were clearly visible through the murk which obscured everything else--a pink, pulsating light. And the three glowing vessels were coming toward them. "Get above them, Kass!" Sine commanded. "When they pass under I'll let them have it." Closer and closer they came, those blobs of light. The Earthmen could see nothing but the light--get no hint of their construction. But that there were men inside they never doubted. The glowing ships seemed to swell, to expand monstrously, and their throbbing emanations became more furious. They seemed to hesitate as they were about to pass beneath. "They see us?" Lents rumbled, pulling at his toga nervously. The cloth was soaked, clinging to his fat body. "Close enough!" Sine decided, leaning out of a port, disintegrator ray tube in his hand. At that instant the strange pink light seemed to encompass the whole planet. They were bathed in it. The fog was a sea of baleful pink. Sine stiffened into impotent rigidity. The ray tube fell from his numbed fingers. He felt himself floating, weightless, in a sea of red that smothered him deliciously. And swiftly even that consciousness was succeeded by black oblivion. CHAPTER IV The Monstrosities "He's coming out of it. Hand me the water, Lents." Sine awoke to see Kass bending over him. He felt weak and languid, and the memory of recent events was returning only slowly. He looked around, saw that he was lying in a chamber about fifteen feet square, evidently hewn out of solid rock. "Are you all right, Sine? Answer me, boy!" Kass' bald head gleamed in the yellowish light of a single emanation tablet on the ceiling.