Keeping well away, they continued to mount. They were striving for the pinnacle of cliff-tops above us; but as our rays darted at them they halted, wavered; and now when nearly above the camp, they began mounting straight up.
One of our tower vehicles was preparing to rise. Its ray, following the search-beams upward, was aimed at the invaders, but they were beyond its effective range. Their weapons of attack? I knew now.
Whether Elza said it, or merely thought it I do not know. One of the figures came down as though falling. A few seconds only; but though our search-beam showed it, the smaller rays for those seconds missed it. Down--until no more than five hundred feet above us it checked its fall. A giant of a man; and with his hand cylinder--in range now--he shot a bolt at our power house. It struck; I could see the flash, saw an aerial shatter before the charge went harmlessly into the body of the building. Then one of our rays caught the man; his figure crumpled; the shower of sparks as his barrage was broken, exploded like a tiny bursting bomb; and as the sparks died, there was nothing where the man had been.
A suicide; but one of our aerials was shattered. And then others came down--not many, for it was grim business and the courage of them must have failed at the last. Falling bodies; tiny bolts striking the power house; the sparks--then empty air where living men had been.
Our tower left the ground. Some of our men, with small flying platforms strapped to them, were crowding its top. Its beams preceded it--but I saw the beams breaking intermittently as the bolts struck the power house. The invaders wavered with indecision. Some of them came down to voluntary death; others strove for the cliff-top; some took flight. Our tower swept into them; one of them, injured but not annihilated, fell with a crash into the encampment.
Above Elza and me was a maze of flashing beams; futile bolts; the puffs of myriad sparks. A bolt seemed to strike quite near where we were sitting; I drew Elza back and we crouched in the hollow of a rock. A body came hurtling down, crashed to the cliff-ledge almost at our feet with the sickening thump of mangled flesh and broken bones--hung an instant to give me a momentary glimpse of a face contorted in death agony; then rolled over and fell further down the jagged cliff.