"No. That." Costigan pointed out a hemispherical dome which, redly translucent, surrounded a group of buildings towering high above their neighbors. "Neither those high towers nor those screens were there the last time I was in this town. Nerado _was_ stalling for time, and that's what they're doing down there--that's all those fire-balls are for. Good sign, too--they aren't ready for us yet. We'd better take 'em while the taking's good. If they _were_ ready for us, our play would be to get out of here while we're all in one piece." Nerado had been in touch with the scientists of his city; he had been instructing them in the construction of converters and generators of such weight and power that they could crush even the defenses of the super-ship. The mechanisms were not, however, ready; the entirely unsuspected possibilities of speed inherent in absolute inertialessness had not entered into Nerado's calculations. "Better drop a few cans down onto that dome, fellows," Rodebush suggested to his gunners. "We can't," came Adlington's instant reply. "No use trying it--that's a polycyclic screen. Can you drill it? If you can, I've got a real bomb here--that special we built--that will do the trick if you can protect it from them until it gets down into the water." "I'll try it," Cleveland answered, at a nod from the physicist. "I couldn't drill Nerado's polycyclics, but I couldn't use any momentum on him. Couldn't ram him--he fell back with my thrust. But that screen down there can't back away from us, so maybe I can work on it. Get your special ready. Hang on, everybody!" The _Boise_ looped upward, and from an altitude of miles dove straight down through a storm of force-balls, beams, and shells; a dive checked abruptly as the hollow tube of energy which was Cleveland's drill snarled savagely down ahead of her and struck the shielding hemisphere with a grinding, lightning-spitting shock. As it struck, backed by all the enormous momentum of the plunging space-ship and driven by the full power of her prodigious generators it bored in, clawing and gouging viciously through the tissues of that rigid and unyielding barrier of pure energy. Then, mighty drill and plunging mass against iron-driven wall, eye-tearing and furiously spectacular warfare was waged. Well it was for Triplanetary that day that its super-ship carried ample supplies of allotropic iron; well it was that her originally Gargantuan converters and generators had been doubled and quadrupled in power on the long Nevian way! For that ocean-girdled fortress was powered to withstand any conceivable assault--but the _Boise's_ power and momentum were now inconceivable; and every watt and every dyne was solidly behind that hellishly flaming, that voraciously tearing, that irresistibly ravening cylinder of energy incredible!