Down it came, faster and faster, like some huge comet painting the sky.

It was dropping at an angle.

Stormalong's muscles strained as though by will alone he could push it into the hills and away from the water above the dam.

Down it came, a blazing incandescent wreck, traveling at great speed.

Five miles uplake from the dam it struck.

The heat and speed of passage thundered in the air. Then came the screeching crash of the strike.

Steam and water geysered a thousand feet in the air.

There was an underwater flash as some remaining part of its fuel exploded.

The shock concussion raced ahead of the wave as great as any tidal wave.

The deserted Chinese village was snuffed out as though it had never been.

The concussion wave hit the back of the dam.

The water wave inundated the structure, smashing flashboards, flying in a mighty cascade into the air at the dam front.

The ground underfoot shook.

Breathless, they steadied themselves and stared. Would the whole dam go?

Waves subsided. The dam was still there. But there was new sound in it.

The lights were still on. The generators were running.

Guards who had been in the powerhouse came staggering out.

Water was roaring down the river as the excess sped away, tearing down banks, ripping through islands.

Engineers came racing from the cone.

Most of the machinery which had been parked near the lake had been swept away. They were racing about trying to find a flying platform.

They found one imbedded in the bank, half-covered with mud. They freed it, swept the mud off it, and got it flying.

The engineers and a machine operator went flying along the top of the dam.

Jonnie and Stormalong stood by beside a plane, waiting to see whether the engineers needed help. Their voices, in Chinese, were coming over a mine radio.

The atmosphere armor over the cone was still sizzling in Stage Three. Guards got back into the powerhouse and turned off the dam protection cable and reduced the cone armor to Stage One.

Although this dam lake was one hundred twenty miles long, it seemed lower in level.

Jonnie and Stormalong were about to take off to see what the engineers had found when they came back. They landed and were reporting to Chong-won. There was a lot of excited and upset talk and Jonnie went over.

“They say the dam did not break,” Chong-won told him. "Flashboards are broken all along the top and even some concrete along the walkway and the guard rails are gone. But that is nothing. They can see no cracks.

However, at the far end of the dam abutment, over there on the other side of the dam, it seems to have shaken loose from the bank and there is water escaping. They say water is erosive and it could get bigger. It could even greatly lower the level of the lake to a point where the water turbines will not run.”

“How many hours?” said Jonnie. Chong-won asked them. They could only guess. Maybe four, maybe five hours. They would do all they could to stop the water and plug the leak. They did not have much grouting to seal it. The whole far end of the dam seemed to have torn out of the bank. They wanted to get back over and do what they could.

Angus came running out of the passageway seeking Jonnie. “We can fire now! There is no shooting.”

“Maybe you can fire the rig,” said Stormalong, appalled at Glencannon's sacrifice. “But for how long?”

“At least he bought us that,” said Jonnie, sadly.

Chapter 5

The small gray man had followed the pack to the Singapore area. He had instructed his ship captain not to get in the way of military craft for they were inclined to be impetuous and prone to accidents, to say nothing of poorly aimed shots. Thus they were a little late on the scene and the battle had already begun.

The minesite was not at all hard to locate– it was a brilliant cone of defensive fire, its guns arcing up and converging upon target after target. It was quite a distance north of the ancient ruined city, and just north of the minesite was a hydroelectric dam. The gunfire was quite intense and disturbed his infrabeams, preventing for the moment a closer inspection of what they had down there.

The small gray man did not consider himself much of a military specialist, and things which a military man might know at once, he usually had to look up. He wanted the maximum-minimum height which would give him a safe altitude from which to observe and it was quite laborious to identify those guns. At last he had it: “Local defense perimeter, computerized antiassault craft, and bomb predetonation atmosphere-nonatmosphere beam projection cannon; rate of fire 15,000 shots per minute, maximum 175,000 feet, minimum safe limit 2,000 feet; crew two; barrels and shields manufactured by Tambert Armaments, Predicham; computers by Intergalactic Arms, Psychlos; Cost C4,269 freight on platform Predicham.” My, my, what cheap guns. But that was Intergalactic Mining: “Profit– first, last, and always, profit.” No wonder they had trouble! One would have thought they would have orbit cannon.

So it was safe to remain two hundred miles up so long as they did not get in the road of launched craft from the non-atmosphere major war vessels riding at three hundred fifty miles high. He told his captain and then asked his communicator to focus beams very sharply on what appeared to be a firing platform under the shield cable below.

He spotted it almost at once and had a surge of hope. It was a console! A transshipment console right there near the platform! There were even some men about it as though working it.

Intently, he watched his viewscreens for a teleportation trace. He watched for quite a while. There was none. He wondered that the military men in the war vessels had not noticed this lack. Maybe they did not know the telltale trace existed. Maybe they had a different make of viewscreen. But the probability was that they had never seen one because they were always shooting and you couldn't shoot-

The small gray man sighed. He was no detective, and the evidence so plain before him had gone unnoticed. Those men down there could not be using a transshipment rig. They even had their own planes in the air. And either one, planes or shots, would prevent any use of teleportation. The rig itself would blow to bits with distortions.

The military had begun to give attention to the power dam lake now and were trying to drop bombs into it to cut off the minesite power supply. This gave a respite to the minesite itself and the small gray man had been put onto that console.

He looked up the mineral traces which resulted.

Carbon!

That settled it. That thing down there was a burned-out console.

It was so disappointing!

He drew off and watched for a while. Combined force planes were not having much luck with the dam lake due to atmosphere-armor cable around it and they were now giving their attention to the air cover planes from below. There was a boiling fight and he saw two Jambitchow combat battle planes blown to bits.

He had his ship moved up higher. Down to the south the combined force bombers had begun to drop bombs into the deserted ancient ruins of Singapore. A fire blossomed up. Then another. He wondered at the military mind that would bomb an undefended city with no military value but which might contain some loot that they so valued. But they always did it.

His indigestion was bothering him again. These were such awful times. There seemed to be no hope at all.

He knew there was a base in the northern continent man had once called “Russia” and he had his ship captain move up there.

One of the attacking-force war vessels was launching planes over that base. They were personnel carriers. The small gray man observed a force of about five hundred Hawvin marines deploying on the plain before the base. Behind fire shields they began to move forward. It almost seemed that the base was not defended. No answering fire came back to the advancing force. It got closer and closer to the base. Several fires erupted. Then the force began to move up a mountain slope toward what must be an underground defense point. The force was within a hundred yards of it now, pouring a hail of fire into it.