Gradually now the men within were awakening. The scene in the control room shifted to the flagship's engine room, as clicking relays shifted the connection to another viewplate on the distant ship. The mighty engines loomed huge above the tiny cots of the sleeping engineers. Here too was the mighty cylinder, but now it was seen as the core of a gigantic coil, into which ran great cables from huge, soft-purring generators. Even the forces of material energy required straining to operate that great electron distorter. Hal Jus pushed another button. Again the tiny relays out in space reconnected him. The commander was awake. The control room was soon a scene of the greatest activity. As soon as the necessary weapon had been discovered, the plans for the great action had been sketched. The formations were rapidly being worked out. The great fleet was divided into ten parts of two thousand each, and to each of the nine smaller, cool planets one of the ten divisions went. The tenth stayed as a guard to the flagship. Now they went in ten great cones of glistening ships, a mighty armada of space, coming across the void to conquer the new universe for Mankind. And now they separated as they drew closer to the System, for the ships had been re-formed nearly four billion miles from the central sun, Betelguese. * * * * * The expeditions swept along over and close to the surface of the planets they had been sent to investigate. Heat, cold, size, made no difference to the Atomic Creatures and all the small planets would be taken first. The smaller planets would be attacked first. The creatures would probably flee to the outer planet, but it was necessary to plan to attack them there. Low over the sunlit surface of a great planet they were swinging; below them there rapidly unrolled a terrain of mighty forests of green trees, vast green meadows of gently rolling land, and all bathed in the blinding glory of a blazing white sun. What a scene for eyes that had been starved of light for countless years! What a land of hope and promise and pleasure it seemed to these small gentle men. For generations the only plants they had seen were the poor small things raised artificially in the museums. Here they saw magnificent trees that towered two-hundred feet into the air, in wondrous profusion of leafy green. Now they were swinging over mighty oceans, gigantic patches of water that were large enough to cover all the surface of their smaller globes, for this planet was large as the long gone Neptune, or Uranus. How wonderful those vast areas of magnificent blue water, sparkling brilliantly in the light of the gigantic sun, seemed to them. Each man, before he started on this expedition, had his eyes treated that the new light would not be too bright and that it might appear white to him, so that now they could fully appreciate the wondrous beauty of the scene beneath.