"Let them," he said. "It's what I wish, to have them massed like that."
From our eminence—we were poised not very far beneath the ground level—we could see over the whole area of the battle which was proceeding below us. The central mob who could not fight; the ring of Brutar's soldiers; and surrounding that, at a distance of some five hundred feet, another ring, Thone's fighters who now were massing to the attack.
"What will they do?" I murmured. But no one answered me, and soon I was answered by the scene itself. From both sides—Thone's army and Brutar's—little waves of the Thought-substance were flowing out over that segment between the opposing rings. Like slow-floating wisps of grey smoke from the heads of the fighters. Flowing across the space between the lines. Materializing steadily. Solidifying until I could almost imagine it might become a grey wall. But this was an illusion. It was merely thought-antagonistic which would grip and hold like a net, no more.
The two opposing streams met in the center of that circular No-man's land between the lines. A chaos of blurred formless color was there. Not grey now. An angry red. The visible substances holding each other immovable. A boiling cauldron of red, with livid, lurid tongues like flame darting from it.
No sound. But I could feel it. A mental distress, as even at this distance its influence swept me. An uneasiness; a depression; a vague sense within me of a growing panic.
It seemed a deadlock. And then began movement; strategic movement. From one portion of his line Thone suddenly withdrew a number of his thinkers. They came sweeping around to our side. With this reinforcement we became stronger over here, and the red chaos surged inward. I saw it flow almost to engulf the crouching Brutar fighters who were here opposing it. Saw a few of them fall—ghostly shells lying inert—and above them a something luminous, the Ego-mind deranged, unhinged, hovering, then winging away into death....
A shape hurriedly approached us; a man with harried, anxious face. "Thone! We are too weak now upon the other side. The Red Death is almost upon us there! They want the thinkers back."
Thone ordered them back. He turned to me. "We will win, Rob."
But I could not see it so.
"Look!" He gestured. "There is a haze above the red. It passes inward—can't you see that? And they cannot stop it. They have not been trained, for they do not know what it is."