“I have fulfilled my promise, Arnold,” said David. “Now I must take Elizabeth within the shelter of the Airscouts’ Fortress, and you will follow with Esther. Then each of us must do his best to rally parties to the assault. All is not going well, Arnold. Our Ray rods are emptying fast, and the storage batteries within the Airscouts’ Fortress have been destroyed, so that we cannot recharge them; the attack upon the lower level of the Wing has failed. Sanson has placed a Ray gun there. All hangs upon the battleplanes, and they have not returned.” He put his arm about his daughter and hurried her toward the bridge, while I picked up Esther, still plunged in that first sleep, and followed him. I saw him lead Elizabeth to safety, but as I was about to follow, a sheet of purple light swept past me, tearing a stanchion from the bridge and knocking down a part of the brick house on the wall above, where Lembken had taken me that night of our first meeting. A gun was playing on the bridge. It was impossible to cross at present. I drew back, waiting. Then a babel of cries broke out on the opposite side, so fierce and wild that, grasping Esther more tightly, I rushed to a window at the further end of the corridor, commanding a view of the exterior courts. The long bridges were packed with our men, making a mad sortie to scale the enclosing walls. Streaks of light, pitiably thin, flashed from their Ray rods, and, with exultant shouts, the Guard sprang forward to meet them. They were dragging lighter Ray guns behind them. For an instant it seemed as if the revolutionists would scale the walls before the heavy Ray artillery could be reaimed at them. The foremost files of the opposing forces clashed and surged and swayed in a rain of meteor flashes. The blackened corpses heaped the bridges, hung, toppled over, and went to swell the heaps below. Then, with a renewed outburst of shouting, the Guard drove back the attack and placed their guns. The blinding flashes swept the bridges, playing like ribands of silvery blue along the course of their discharge. Everywhere along the bridges swarmed the stampede of flight, checked where the Rays caught the fugitives and twisted them into charred lumps, sweeping away the superstructure also, and the bridge rails. I saw one bridge go down, as a deflected Ray wrenched it from its piers. It spewed its burden upon the stones below, and from among the dead, little figures leaped up and began to run for refuge toward the Council Wing; and there a blast from a Ray gun found them, and the heavy doors crumbled upon them, and wood and men were ground into the same pulpy blackness. The Ray had found the weak spots of the great buildings, and from the Temple top huge stones came crashing down, rebounding along the courts and splintering into fragments. Clouds of dust rose up like smoke from conflagrations.