"Your ordeal is at hand," he said simply, as, in a flash, the bright aura transferred itself to the person of Mortoch.
The two soldiers guarding the entrance to the pit were backing away to either side and throwing voltage bombs into the passageway as Mortoch ran toward them.
"Stop!" he shouted, never slackening his pace. "This is my job! Get out of range!"
He halted six feet away from the mouth of the passage and raised his arms up in a gesture of defiance. An admiring gasp went up from the crowd of watching humans at the tall, lean figure bathed in its luminous glow. Then a deathly silence shut down abruptly as four little figures erupted through the passageway. Martians!
They were scarcely two feet tall, with spindly little bodies and legs, but their heads were more than twice the size of human heads and looked doubly grotesque in their combination helmet-masks. One of them was holding a big, black cone—the Photo-Atomic generator. Quickly the little creature leveled it at Mortoch and pulled a lever on the side. An ominous high-pitched hum filled the air and everyone knew that the death Ray was being poured in all its deadly violence on Mortoch.
Thamon was the first to raise his voice in a shout as Mortoch, unharmed, strode forward and felled the Martian with one blow of his fist. The air rang with human cheers as Mortoch seized two more scurrying Martians by the legs and dashed their brains out on the ground.
"It works!" Thamon yelled, hysterically. "It's tridium! We're saved!"
The scientist was hacking crazily at the rock with his metal staff and jubilant soldiers swarmed around him, picking up pieces of tridium. In a few moments the whole force, every man surrounded by the luminous aura, was bolting through the passageway into the bottom of the pit.
For a short time the Martians tried to put up a battle. But with their chief weapon nullified, they were slaughtered by the dozen, and the survivors began flitting up the shaft. In the midst of the turmoil, Dynamon kept his wits about him. He knew that in order to realize the full value of the tridium discovery, the Martians on the surface must be kept from learning about it. He raised his voice in a mighty shout over the clamor.