"That isn't good enough!" retorted Maynard. "This is no pink tea, Donigan. This is a matter of life and death. We have the moonlet you wanted for a base—we've had it for three weeks of sheer hell—and you say 'Soon.' With what I've got left I can't even make a stab back. It's no fun fighting a purely defensive fight, Donigan. You never know when the devils will hit, and my men are tired of being surprised in their beds."
"Do they do that all the time?" asked Donigan, thinking to chide Guy for exaggeration.
"About seven times out of ten. We may not know them, Donigan, but somehow they know us—all about us."
"What do you want?"
"Men, ordnance, materiel, hospital units, doctors, nurses, ships, and planet-fighters."
"Guy, you aren't going to blast the planet itself?"
"I sure am. At least I can make the fight come when I want it. This way, they'll blast us off of Three in another two weeks."
"You'll get them. They should be there now."
Maynard returned to the moonlet in hope—and he was watching the sky when the Mephistans hit.
Out of the black sky came a downpour of deadly torpedoes. They burst among the barracks, and though their detonations did no harm in the ultrathin atmosphere of Mephisto III, the fragmentation shot the shelters full of holes and the trapped Terran air escaped. Men died in their sleep, that night, and the Mephistans covered the moonlet in sub-ships of their own devising.