"Just believe me," he pleaded. "Order your men and the mist units to move at once!"
Deisanocta moved to the radio and obeyed. Barry Williams' heart leaped. She believed in him, her recent doubt forgotten before the vigor of his arguments.
"And us?" she asked.
"We're all right, being underground. The infra-red rays won't betray us in the photographs. Listen!"
They heard the sound of rocket jets overhead, and it was magnified, built into thunder in their ears. The radio was still tuned to the field command radios, and they brought the sound of Grey's rocket ships from every corner of the planet.
Before their eyes, the white mist swirled, and on the view screen were twelve small squares of silver. Suddenly, almost simultaneously, lurid streaks cut across those squares—flaming heat rays, softened into orange by the seething vapor!
Deisanocta gasped. "You were right, Barry Williams! Had my forces not moved, they would have been destroyed.
"But it is Grey who has failed this time!"
Barry faced her slowly. His blue eyes rested on her lovely face, and the words he spoke caught in his throat.
"Grey will wait a short while for the mist to dissipate," he said. "When it does not, he'll go back to the pictures. About every spot where a unit or force was shown, he'll draw a circle. The radius of that circle will be the distance a man can travel on foot from the time the photograph was taken, until the time the ships return a second time.