Wing spoke into the phone again as the flower grew bluer along the edge. The blue deepened and deepened until it was almost black. Then Wing spoke into the phone once more.
The circling cruisers steadied. Their blue bolts spat at the blackness.
The shock of it could be seen for miles in the blue flower. The shield blackened in scattered spots. Where every black spot showed, the bolts from the Earth ships lashed.
The terrible power unleashed inside the shield began to show as the flower shrunk back into itself.
The ground smoked and trembled as it emerged from the retreating force field; great fissures opened and the ground trembled and shook as if in the grip of an earthquake.
Wing snapped a halt order to the captains on either side of him and the word moved rapidly down the line.
Bracing themselves against the shock of the quake, they waited.
It wasn't for long.
In the brightening day ahead of them, on the leveled plain behind them, the Earthmen saw the shadow-things approaching, their power bolts lashing out ahead of them. Every other man turned, so that half of them faced the shadows ahead and half the shadows behind.
The powder guns crashed, and the steel and lead and copper pellets whined a song of death in the ranks of the shadows.