He swung the rifle to his shoulder and fired. The bullet whined off the sphere as if it were steel. Pember jerked his head in despair. Angrily he fired again. His tin hat slid to one side of his head at a rakish angle. "You spawn of hell!" he cried. Pember lowered his gun. The sphere pulsed ominously. Then the doughboy charged. Beneath the brim of his helmet Pember's jaws were set. His half-closed eyes, glazed by the dazzling light from the sphere, were two slits of savage determination. There was something glorious in that charge. It was a soldier going into battle against hopeless odds. And it was more. The army of human civilisation at that moment consisted of one buck private, pitting everything he had against something that even science could not analyze. The sudden attack seemed to surprise the sphere. It bounded back, moving swiftly out of the way of the advancing one-man army. Pember roared. There were no words in what he shouted. It was just a cry, the battle cry of humanity. "Heave!" chorused Taylor and Masters. They too had a battle cry. Every man was doing his best and would die doing it, if necessary. There was a crack and a hiss. A flicker of flame flashed over the charging soldier. An odor of charred human flesh filled the room. Then came a new sound, the hissing splash of spilled metal. The pot was dumped. Taylor dropped the rope and faced the sphere. He saw the charred pile of ashes beside the inhuman creature. Nearby was a fused tube of metal, all that was left of Pember's rifle. "All right, you devil!" shouted Taylor. "Strike and be damned! There's one thing you can't fix, and that's the metal pot. Your spores are dead. Your mistake was in having a metal pot for a mother!" Taylor sensed understanding in the sphere. Those eyes that were not eyes, but windows of the mind, seemed to fade. Flame licked out again from the monster, but it did not launch toward Taylor. Nor was Masters the target. Instead, the flame reached toward the fading yellow hemisphere and the cooling pool of metal on the floor. There lay the hopes of the species on this planet, wrecked with a block and tackle. _Plop_! The hemisphere exploded like a bubble. _Plop_! The mourning sphere disappeared. _Plop. Plop. Plop._ Three more spheres appeared in the opening in the roof and vanished. Masters tugged on Taylor's sleeve. "Come on! We've got a chance, if we can get to the tunnel!" Taylor shook his head. "No need. We're safe now. If they've changed to radio energy, the big broadcast is on." The sky was filled with exploding spheres as the whispers sobbed the tale of the disaster. A score of the energy monsters, bred from the metal pot overnight, burst in the rays of the rising sun. Energy, meeting resistance, was changing to something else. The war of energy and matter might continue on the molten surface of the sun, but on earth there would be only the wars of ideals. * * * * *