But her jubilation was premature. The squat and monstrous fabrication burst upward through that flaming surface and, white-hot lava streaming from it in incandescent torrents, it was again in action, apparently uninjured.
But the squat and monstrous flying fort burst upward through the seething surface and was again in full action.
"All fourth-order stuff, Mart," Seaton, who had been frantically busy at his keyboard and instruments, reported to Crane. "Can't find a trace of anything on the fifth or sixth, and that gives us a break. I don't know what we can do yet, but we'll do something, believe me!"
"Fourth order? Are you sure?" Crane doubted. "A fourth-order screen would be a zone of force, opaque and impervious to gravitation, whereas those screens are transparent and are not affecting gravity."
"Yeah, but they're doing something that we never tried, since we never used fourth-order stuff in fighting. They've both left the gravity band open—it's probably too narrow for them to work through, at least with anything very heavy—and that gives us the edge."
"Why? Do you know more about it than they do?" queried Dorothy.
"Who and what are they, Dick?" asked Margaret.