"Would our heat-ray actually set them afire, Steve?" Nadia asked, as the plate went blank.
"I'll say it would. I'll show you what heat means to them—showing you will be plainer than any amount of explanation," and he shot the visiray beam down toward the city of Titania. Into a low-lying building it went, and Nadia saw a Titanian foundry in full operation. Men clad in asbestos armor were charging, tending, and tapping great electric furnaces and crucibles; shrinking back and turning their armored heads away as the hissing, smoking melt crackled into the molds from their long-handled ladles. Nadia studied the foundry for a moment, interested, but unimpressed.
"Of course it's hot there—foundries always are hot," she argued.
"Yes, but you haven't got the idea yet." Stevens turned again to the controls, following the sphere toward what was evidently a line of battle. "That stuff that they are melting and casting and that is so hot, is not metal, but ice! Remember that the vital fluid of all life here, animal and vegetable, corresponding to our water, is probably more inflammable than gasoline. If they can't work on ice-water without wearing suits of five-ply asbestos, what would a real heat-ray do to them? It'd be about like our taking a dive into the sun!"
"Ice!" she exclaimed. "Oh of course—but you couldn't really believe a thing like that without seeing it, could you? Oh, Steve—how utterly horrible!"
The "Barkodar" had dropped down into a line of sister ships, and had gone into action in midair against a veritable swarm of foes. Winged centipedes they were—centipedes fully six feet long, hurling themselves along the ground and through the air in furious hordes. From the flying globes emanated pale beams of force, at the touch of which the Sedlor disappeared in puffs of vapor. Upon the ground huge tractors and trucks, manned by masked soldiery, mounted mighty reflectors projecting the same lethal beam. From globes and tanks there sounded a drumming roar and small capsules broke in thousands among the foe; emitting a red cloud of gas in which the centipedes shriveled and died. But for each one that was destroyed two came up from holes in the ground and the battle-line fell back toward Titania, back toward a long line of derrick-like structures which were sinking force-rods into the ground in furious haste.
Stevens flashed on his ultra-violet projector and swung it into the thickest ranks of the enemy. In the beam many of the monsters died, but the Terrestrial ray was impotent compared with the weapons of the Titanians, and Stevens, snapping off the beam with a bitter imprecation, shot the visiray out toward the bare, black cone of the extinct volcano and studied it with care.
"Barkovis, I've got a thought!" he snapped into the microphone. "Their stronghold is in that mountain, and there's millions of them in there yet, coming out along their tunnels. They've got all the vegetation eaten away for miles, so there's nothing much left there to spread a fire if I go to work on that hill, and, I'll probably melt enough water to put out most of the fires I start. Detail me a couple of ships to drop your fire-foam bombs on any little blazes that may spread, and I'll give them so much to worry about at home, that they'll forget all about Titania."
The Forlorn Hope darted toward the crater, followed closely by two of the dazzling globes. They circled the mountain until Stevens found a favorable point of attack—a stupendous vertical cliff of mingled rock and crystal, upon the base of which he trained his terrific infra-red projector.
"I'm going to draw a lot of power," he warned the Titanians then. "I'm giving this gun everything she'll take."