Darker and darker grew the sky, until it seemed to be obscured by a mass of small dark clouds, clouds that drew together, fused, condensed. Smaller and smaller grew that mass of blackness, the sunlight pouring down around its edges. And now it was descending, dropping swiftly down toward the massed disks above, dropping down until it showed itself as not a single mass, but as several, dropping down until he saw that it was five black disks, five that raced toward the line of other disks above. Wonder filled him, and a dawning comprehension. These were disks returning from the super-world, he saw, dwindling down until they entered our own universe—but how came it that only five returned? Five, of the mighty thousands Marlowe had seen, that had attacked the super-world! Were they messengers?

He saw the five race toward the hundreds above, saw them hang with those hundreds for a space of minutes, then confusion seemed to run through the massed disks above, that were suddenly swooping back down to the hilltop. As they sank down to the summit, their numbers darkened the sky, and he saw, without understanding, a mass of their number that seemed to grow smaller, that dwindled and vanished within the pit. Another mass did likewise, and another. They were returning to their own atom! And now Hunter understood, at last.

The five were—survivors!

Their attack on the super-world had failed—they were in retreat—retreat from—but look! Look!

The sky above was again darkening, even more intensely than before. Even as the disks of the invaders dwindled and sank with frantic haste into the pit, the darkness above was compressing, contracting, resolving into a myriad of dark, long shapes, shapes that swooped swiftly down upon the disordered disks above. Long, black, fishlike hulls, utterly different from the disks of the atomic people. As they came down upon the disks, flashes of violent lightning flickered from the fish-hulls, striking disk after disk, sending them down in whirling masses of bursting flames.

It was the super-people, Hunter knew, pursuing the atomic invaders from their own greater world, where the attack of their mighty fleet of disks had failed.

From the few disks that stood to the terrible attack of the super-people, the blue Cold Ray sprang out sullenly, but at its first appearance the circling, swooping hulls vanished entirely from view. Then from all the air around the disks, flash on flash of lightning stabbed at them. The super-warriors had made themselves invisible.