
only the vaguest reports of the presence of a big ship were spread. And for long no one suspected that
the ship was not occupied by human beings.
Their precautions could not alter the natural order of life and death. Some hours out of Titan, a Riss
workman who was repairing a minor break in an instrument on the outer skin of the spaceship, was
struck by a meteor. By an immense coincidence, the flying object was moving in the same direction as the
ship and at approximately the same speed. The workman was killed by the blow, and swept out into
space. On Europa, the largest moon, a Riss one-man exploring craft made its automatic return to the
mother ship but without its pilot aboard. Its speedometer registered more than a thousand miles of flight,
and those who tried to follow its curving back trail found themselves over mountains so precipitous that
the search was swiftly abandoned. Surprisingly, both bodies were found, the former by meteor miners
from Europa, the latter by troops engaged in grueling maneuvers preliminary to Czinczar's invasion of
Earth. Both monstrosities were brought to the leader; and, putting together various reports he had heard,
he made an unusually accurate guess as to the origin of the strange beings.
His attack on Earth took place a few months later while the alien ship was still in the vicinity of Europa.
And his defeat at the hands of Lord Clane Linn followed. The machine from the stars continued its
unhurried voyage of exploration. It arrived on Mars less than a month after Lord Jerrin and his army
embarked for Earth, and another month went by before its presence was reported to the Linnan military
governor on Mars.
A descendant of the great Raheinl, he was a proud young man, who dismissed the first account as a tale
of simple imagination, all too common in these regions where education had fallen a victim of protracted
wars. But when the second report came in from another section, it struck him that this might be the
Martian version of the barbarian invasion. He acted swiftly and decisively.
Police spaceships and patrol craft scoured the atmosphere. And, since the alien made no effort to avoid
being seen, contact was established almost immediately. Two of the police craft were destroyed by great
flares of energy. The other ships, observing the catastrophe from a distance, withdrew hastily.
If the Riss noticed that they were now in a more highly mechanized part of the solar system, they did not
by their actions let it disturb them. If they guessed that in these regions their action meant war, they
seemed equally unaware of that.
The governor dispatched a warning to Earth, and then set about organizing his forces. For two weeks his
patrol craft did nothing but watch, and the picture that came through was very satisfactory to the grim
young man. The enemy, it appeared, was sending out exploring parties in small ships. It was these, on the
fifteenth day, that the human-manned ships attacked in swarms.
The technique of assault had been very carefully worked out. In every case an attempt was made to ram
the Riss craft. Four of the attacks were successful. The smashed "lift" boats glittered in the dull afternoon
light as they fell to the flat earth below. Swiftly, spaceships darted down, drew the fallen machines
aboard, and hastily took off for widely separated landing fields.
It was a major victory, greater even than was immediately suspected. The enemy reacted the following
morning. The city of Gadre blew up in a colossal explosion that sent a mushroom of smoke billowing up
to obscure the atmosphere for a hundred miles.
The ferocity of the counterattack ended the war on Mars. The alien was left strictly alone thereafter. The
youthful Raheinl, stunned by the violence of the response, ordered the evacuation of the larger cities, and
dispatched another of a long series of warning reports to Earth. He also sent along for examination the
two largest and least damaged of the enemy small craft which he had captured.