"My God, Doctor!" Koto cried, and I knew he had leaped to the same conclusion I had. Suddenly I brushed Koto's hands away from the gun, and myself directed it so that its ray cut straight across one whole group of the queer creatures on the beach. Then I cursed. Instead of being cut down, broken like so many blades of grass, not one of the creatures showed that the ray had touched them at all. They only uttered tremendous hoarse sounds that might have been laughter. I stood up. "Koto, Leider's found means of protecting both raw materials and living beings against the atomic gun!" * * * * * Captain Crane was beside us now, and I saw that she did not need to be told of the disaster. As Koto turned away from the gun, I thought of LeConte below. When the waves closed in on us, he would be caught like a rat. The shriek of the wind and the crash of waves grew louder. I felt upon my face the sting of spray from the aqueous solution of which the lashing sea at our stern was composed. The cable held, and the ship continued to move. We were barely a hundred yards away from the shore. All at once, though, a string of both chemical and physical formulae--the last thing a man would expect to think of in such a position--flashed into my mind. "Here, wait a minute," I thought. "If Leider's done this thing, it means--it must mean--that he's juggled his atomic structures through production in terrific quantities of the quondarium light which I theorized about last year! But he can't have done that without playing hell with the action of magnetic forces from beginning to end! I believe if we take the gun aft and direct it at--" That was as far as I got with forming words. I flung myself toward the gun and began to drag it to a position aft, where we might direct its ray full force, at close range, against the magnetic metal plate which held the cable to our stern. "Help me!" I yelled at the others. Koto was the first to close in. Struggling, slipping, hampered rather than helped by our great strength, we clawed our way aft. A combined lurch of ship and blast of wind threw Captain Crane down, but she staggered up. We dropped the gun with a thump at a spot where the bulging curve of the stern swelled directly under the muzzle. I grabbed at the trigger just as a new surge of movement brought the flier perilously close to a great, inrushing wall of water which was not water. Koto's face was drawn, and Virginia Crane was staring in horrified fascination at the gun. * * * * * Again came the faint trembling of the beautifully constructed mechanism. The green ray leaped out across the blinding whiteness of our light rays. I jammed the muzzle down until the whole force of the atomic stream was spouting against the magnetic plate which held the cable to our stern. "Look, Doctor! Look!" Captain Crane cried. But I was already looking.