There was nothing to watch. The Martians had been routed.
I fumbled with my belt and unfastened myself while Axel aimed his gun at the Pnyx Martians. His semi-automatic fire was sending geysers of poisonous Martian flesh out of the ditch when I jumped off the car.
The bass-chirps of the Martian voices were screaming panic now. It wasn't necessary to know their language to realize all the fight was gone from their hearts—or whatever they used for a heart—as Axel pumped explosive shots into their midst.
Part of them was trying to scale the back wall of the ditch. Others were stampeding, like cattle, in all directions. Those that came my way were halted by the causeway and now I opened fire on these.
Gail had emerged from the car and now she stood without cover at the edge of the moat, shooting at the Martians with her pistol.
"Get back, Gail!" I screamed.
A single Martian sent a flash of flame toward her. It sparked off her helmet. Then she realized she was exposed and jumped behind the barricade Axel had used.
Axel's gun had stopped firing now and he was starting to reload. I shifted my aim, pouring the rest of my magazine into the group nearest him. They had no way of knowing it was not his gun. Even their radar senses could not follow the path of a bullet.
It was a massacre, but the kind of slaughter that saved lives.
The panic of the Martians in the moat communicated itself to those on the desert. Instead of joining hands to try again to overwhelm us, they broke their ranks and fled as the straggling remains of their allies from the south scrambled out of the pit around the spaceship and fled in all directions.