"That's so, too--never thought of that angle, Peg. You've got a belt on, haven't you?" "Yes." "Fine! Loosen it up and I'll run mine through it. The belts and an ankle-and-knee lock'll hold us together and in position to play tunes on those sea horses' ribs. Keep your shield up and keep that grating swinging and we'll lay them like a carpet." Seaton had not been idle while he was talking, and when the attackers drew near, vicious tridents outthrust, they encountered an irresistibly driven wall of crushing, tearing, dismembering, and all-destroying metal. Back to back the two unknown monstrosities floated through the air; interlaced belts holding their vulnerable backs together, gripped legs holding their indestructibly dense and hard bodies in alignment. [Illustration: _The hypermen encountered an irresistibly driven wall of crushing, tearing, dismembering and all-destroying metal._] For a time the four-dimensional creatures threw themselves upon the Terrestrials, only to be hurled away upon all sides, ground literally to bits. For Margaret protected Seaton's back, and he himself took care of the space in front of him, to right and to left of them, above and below them; driving the closely spaced latticework of his metal grating throughout all that space so viciously and so furiously that it seemed to be omnipresent as well as omnipotent. * * * * * Then, giving up hope of recapturing the specimens alive, the hyperbeings turned upon them their lethal beams. Soft, pinkly glowing beams which turned to a deep red and then flamed through the spectrum and into the violet as they were found to have no effect upon the human bodies. But the death rays of the hypermen, whatever the frequency, were futile--the massed battalions at the pit's mouth were as impotent as had been the armed forces of the great hypercity, whose denizens had also failed either to hold or to kill the supernatural Terrestrials. During the hand-to-hand encounter the two had passed the apex of their flight; and now, bathed in the varicolored beams, they floated gently downward, directly toward the great derrick which Seaton had pointed out as marking their probable landing place. In fact, they grazed one of the massive corner members of the structure; but Seaton interposed his four-dimensional shield and, although the derrick trembled noticeably under the impact, neither he nor Margaret was hurt as they drifted lightly to the ground. "Just like jumping off of and back into a feather bed!" Seaton exulted, as he straightened up, disconnected the hampering belts, and guided Margaret toward the vast hole in the ground, unopposed now save for the still-flaring beams. "Wonder if any more of them want to argue the right of way with us? Guess not." "But how are we going to get down there?" asked Margaret.