We were triumphant. We would soon be out of this. Tama was nearby, with a flying platform.

"All right, now," Jimmy murmured. "How glad I am you're not in the sphere! It's been holding up this fight." He was trembling with eagerness and triumph. "Fearful handicap for Grenfellcome onwe've got to get outget back to Grenfell. Things are starting off there already." We crawled forward, but we did not get far. The camp, in advance of us and to the sides, burst into a sudden chaos.

Bombs were dropping from overhead. One of them exploded within the camp. Outside the barrage, girls were attacking.

"Heckl" muttered Jimmy. "We can't get out now." I gathered him in my arms. He was incredibly light, as though I were holding a child. I ran. With Rowena beside me.

But it was useless. A light flare came down from overhead and struck the ground near us. For a second Or two the rocks were painted white with the dazzling glare. I stumbled and fell. Jimmy kept his wits; he reached and drew Rowena down with us.

We lay in a cluster of boulders against which we huddled for shelter. And over us, with amazing suddenness, the battle raged in full fury.

We were trapped. The storm and the conflict were both at their height. How long we three lay there I have no idea. I could not guess the progress of the battle; I only knew that every moment a more lurid inferno showed around us.

Rowena suddenly whispered, "Where is Jimmy?" I realized that she and I were alonel Jimmy had crawled away from us! XVI BATTLE FURY GBEMFELL, during all this time, found himself in an increasing dilemma. He knew that once he ordered these flying virgins to the attack, the conflict would be sharp and brief.

But Grenfell had no intention of precipitating such a crisis.

Dorreks forces were bottled; by exhaustion of his food supplies he could be overcome. And there was the question of electronic power. It seemed probable that Dorrek could not maintain this huge barrage for many hours. Inevitably his batteries would be exhausted.

In a day-cycle Commander Arton would be coming up the canyon with the reinforcements, a thousand young men, upon whom Grenfell preferred the brunt of the conflict to fall. An attack now by the flying girls would be too deadlythe losses too great.

But Grenfell finally sent the two largest platforms to an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Each carried a giant projector. The rays spat down, and crossed the barrage curtain with a hissing turmoil of sparks.

Coming back, one of the platforms abruptly disobeyed orders. Four men manned its long-range ray; thirty girls flew it. Instead of returning to Grenf ell's camp on the cliff,,it droppped low into the valley and hurled itself at one of the base projectors of the barrage. The projector bent its ray down, but missed. The platform went like a speeding projectile, its beam darting before it. Then Dorrek's ray caught it and clung. From the deck of the Cube the shuddering Grenfell saw the bodies of the thirty girls wither and fall.

For an instant the insulated platform held together. It was, barely a hundred feet from the barrage base. Its ray spluttered and vanished. The platform tilted, and crashed to the rocks, the black figures of its men little falling dots against the barrage light.

A group of girls made a similar attack. From the darkness of the valley floor they hurled themselves at an opening between the barrage projectors.

Flying in a group, they skimmed the surface. They safely passed the barrage line, rose inside over the enemy camp.

For a minute perhaps they dropped their bombs. The flares were visible to Grenfell through the curtain. How many of Dorrek's men and insects were killed was never known.

The beams from the hand weapons of the girls were flashing down. They flew holding their shields to protect their bodies and wings as well as they could. Mounting, they crossed perhaps a third of the camp, leaving a trail of destruction beneath them. But one by one the enemy rays caught them and brought them down.

That was enough for Grenfell. Three hundred of the girls were still in the cliff camp near the Cube. He ordered them to keep out of the air, and sent two of the emergency platforms to fly to the lower camp and order the four hundred girls, the projectors and flying platforms there to come up here and join him. Dorrek's activities were at this upper end, and if he tried to escape through the lower canyon he would encounter Arton's army.

Grenfell sought Tama, but she was missing. He could not locate Jimmy Turk, Guy, Toh, or Roc.

The storm was increasing in fury. Grenfell moved the Cube forward and began firing directly down. But the shots were always intercepted. The Cube was unwieldy when flying for short distances close to the ground. But twice Grenfell manipulated it around the valley; and once it fired down from four miles overhead.

He wanted to hit the base projectors, but he could not.

One or two of the shots entered the camp. This he did not altogether want. It was a horrible handicap, tor Grenfell did not want a shot of his to strike the Mercurian ball in which Rowena and I had been imprisoned.

Rain was presently falling. The crazy wind had steadied.

The red lightning flares and thunder cracks were almost continuous. Dorrek's mounting bombs fell upon the cliff. The wind brought the gas fumes. Grenfell closed up the Cube, firing down into the turmoil through its -deck port.

He ordered the girls farther back and a hundred of them into the air to dissipate the fumes with neutralizing bombs.

It was then, with Tama and Guy missing, that events got beyond Grenfell's control. Dorrek's barrage advanced again until it reached the base of the cliff. Grenfell thought Dorrek's move was to command the canyonto enable his men to escape back toward the Cold Country. He planned to let them go; the deep, narrow gorge was twenty miles long in this direction; the escaping men and brues could easily be assailed later. Grenfell was watching the silver ball where.

it still lay in the center of the valley. He was convinced that Dorrek and his leaders were aboard it; if he should ascend to get away, the Cube was ready for the chase.

But the enemy did not escape. Brues began crawling up the perpendicular cliff in the segment which the barrage now commanded. A hundred of the giant insects were on top of the cliff before Grenfell was aware of it. And to each of them three or four men had clung. They spread out over the upper plateau.

Lurking men among the rocks, dark, slithering insectsspreading out, advancing upon Grenf ell's camp. The fume bombs and rockets stopped coming. But the insects with their human burden mounted the cliff wall steadily.

Grenfell ordered his girls and platforms into the air. They flew low, seeking out the crawling enemy. The upper plateau in all that vicinity was dotted with the tiny lights of the girls, flashing down upon the gruesome insects. Brief combatsalways with the brue left writhing in death agony.

Dorrek's men were harder to find. Once upon the clifftop, they had ordered the insects forward, left them, and vanished.

Presently no more came up. The move puzzled Grenfell.

Then abruptly they attacked the Cubel Grenfell was standing with his men on D-Face deck. The lower door was open. There was a flurry of girls flying nearby. Grenfell saw, in a red lightning puff, fifty or more furred figures of men running forward among the crags near at hand.

With short hand rays darting before them, they rushed at the Cube's doorway.

The infuriated, reckless girls buried themselves down like frenzied birds. Doubtless none of the men would have lived to reach the doorway. But it startled Grenfell, as Dorrek probably intended. The Cube hastily rose; and as it lifted, a projector, of longer range than any of Dorrek's others, shot at it from the barrage line.