These creatures were not entirely defenseless, for if their numbers were great enough they could exert a powerful interfering force and break down the protective field. But they knew that many would be required. And now all in an instant the battle for this world was on, the great creatures striving to destroy the ships, while burning rays of milk radiance stabbed and slashed at their strange glowing force-pools. Soon they found the vulnerable point of the ships and began to attack single ships in numbers. Slowly, slowly, the milky radiance would contract, while the smooth purring of the mighty generators rose to a throaty hum, then became a vicious snarling roar. The great electron distorter cylinder would become a mass of shooting sparks, crackling, snapping till the atmosphere about it was alive with twisting streamers of flame twelve to twenty-four inches long. Then slowly it would heat--and if the attack was still unbroken, there would be a queer sighing hum from the generator, and a slight explosion--and the ship was gone. The generators, however, would withstand the attacks of ten or eleven of the creatures safely, and the other ships would come to the rescue--but many times there were no free ships in the neighborhood, and all available power must be turned into the ray generators, the slashing beams cutting at the many opponents. Even the propulsion apparatus was robbed of energy that every last meg-erg might be fed into the ray generators. Thousands of the Atomic Giants were destroyed, their color turning that strange green, then they suddenly were snuffed out. But sixty-two ships were lost. Still many remained when at last the Atomic enemy fled suddenly into space. There was no way of following their motion, they merely disappeared, going off with the speed of light. Then the visitors explored all that world, and nowhere did they find any more creatures. But now the reports from all the other planets were coming in, and in every case eventual victory was secured. On two planets the issue was for a time in doubt, for there seemed to be great centers of the creatures here. However, there was no difficulty in discovering where the remnant had fled to! The electronic activity readings of the outermost planet, the minor sun, had risen 12.5 per cent. Since a star does not depend on atomic energy, it was easy to see that the creatures had sought refuge here. The range of the present ray was too short to permit attack on that planet. The blazing furnace drove them back to a distance of a million miles as the least distance of safe approach. They could not attack the creatures here. What could they do? They must exterminate them before the people moved to their new planets, for the creatures could make a raid, destroy a city, and be gone before the battleships could leave their docks.