Koerber appeared at the lock of the pirate spacer then he scrambled down with surprising agility, followed by three of his men. "Who in hell is playing jokes!" The pirate roared. "Come on!" He yelled at the two guards now at the cave's entrance. "You ... Branche ... Jennings! Who's getting funny? Somebody's going to get their heads blasted off for this!" But instantly on the heels of Koerber's tirade, came Scotty's voice, magnified a hundred times: "Your time's almost up, Koerber! Fifteen seconds more and _the newest, most deadly weapon of the I.S.P._ will be released against you!" Even though he was still concentrating on the spheres and the emotion of fear, Dennis felt a sudden exaltation. But he brushed it aside and continued to recreate the terrible fear that had begun to invade his being under his relentless auto-hypnosis. Subconsciously he could hear Scotty's sonorous voice describing the horrible, irresistible weapon that was to be used. Scotty was doing a magnificent job of laying it on, with variations! Koerber gazed around in stupefaction, then spying the prone figure at the mouth of the cave, he cursed at Dennis and then began to race across to the trussed up figure of his enemy, but he was halted by a hoarse shout from one of his guards: "Boss, look! _There is_ something coming!" The guard yelled excitedly. Still lying on the ground, where the guards had dropped him, Dennis could barely see the top of the cliff behind him. Over the edge, high above the plain, swept cluster after cluster of the glowing, gloriously shimmering spheres. A myriad rain of lavender, greens, pulsing reds and flamboyant blues, iridescent, flaming with inward fires and spinning ever faster the spectral globes swept downwards in the deepening twilight with dazzling speed. "Get the gun working, you scum!" Koerber cursed, pointing to the portable atom-ray still remaining outside the spacer. Two men jumped at his order and the livid ray blasted skyward. Blasting fiercely for a few seconds, the two outlaws hesitated. Astonishment then fear crossed their stubbled faces. The deadly ray was merely expanding the globes, which flared into incandescent light and, kept right on coming down! Huge chunks out of the side of the cliff behind the zooming spheres crashed to the plain. And still the glittering flood of glowing globes kept flowing on. His men must have done a wonderful job of luring the deadly spheres, Dennis thought with a part of his mind. "Needle guns!" Koerber screamed, rushing over to the two men who stopped firing. "Use your hand guns, men! Someone get atomite capsules, we'll blast whatever these things are out of space!" Picking up the heavy atom-ray, Koerber cradled it in his powerful arms, sweeping the deadly projector in wide arcs through the approaching, luminous mass. Suddenly, Koerber shouted again. One of the men near the stern of the ship had dropped his weapon and was running, horror-stricken, across the broken ground.