It was Curt Wing's powder gun which opened the attack when they struck against the invisible force barrier. In the dawn light, all up and down that long thin line, the powder guns began snapping and crackling. Tommy guns, rifles and revolvers hurled their slugs at the wall. * * * * * The long line kept moving forward. Wing snapped on the portable radio phone strapped across his chest, and at his words, far behind him, a dozen space cruisers--those which could be spared from the battle against the Mercurians above Earth--rose and soon were scintillating in the rays of a sun still hidden by the rim of Earth. As the line of marching men strode forward, the cruisers, their rocket motors vibrating the air, circled high above them. The line reached the edge of the flower--and the intensity of the firing increased until it was the steady roll of a thousand drums. Wing spoke into the phone again as the flower grew bluer along the edge. The blue deepened and deepened until it was almost black. Then Wing spoke into the phone once more. The circling cruisers steadied. Their blue bolts spat at the blackness. The shock of it could be seen for miles in the blue flower. The shield blackened in scattered spots. Where every black spot showed, the bolts from the Earth ships lashed. The terrible power unleashed inside the shield began to show as the flower shrunk back into itself. The ground smoked and trembled as it emerged from the retreating force field; great fissures opened and the ground trembled and shook as if in the grip of an earthquake. Wing snapped a halt order to the captains on either side of him and the word moved rapidly down the line. Bracing themselves against the shock of the quake, they waited. It wasn't for long. In the brightening day ahead of them, on the leveled plain behind them, the Earthmen saw the shadow-things approaching, their power bolts lashing out ahead of them. Every other man turned, so that half of them faced the shadows ahead and half the shadows behind. The powder guns crashed, and the steel and lead and copper pellets whined a song of death in the ranks of the shadows. The mist things exploded and disappeared as the multi-shaped spawn of Dead-Eye's Elizabeth struck their shields. Like puncturing a kid's balloon with a needle, Curt Wing thought. He was laughing now--man had risen once again from the dust. No longer need he despair. He had been stopped only momentarily in his climb toward destiny. After this unbelievable enemy, the Mercurians would be, perhaps not simply, but finally, hurled back to their hell-pot planet. It was a tired and weary Curt Wing who threaded his way through the smoking ash of what had been one of the mightiest of Earth cities. He moved toward the church, which stood so remarkably untouched by the tremendous forces which had been unleashed within the blue flower.