The Universe Wreckers by Edmond Hamilton — Read

The minute that followed was a grotesque whirl of swift action, a desperate reeling struggle between Marlin and me cased in our great space-walkers, and the great disk-bodied Neptunians. Even as they had leaped upon us, we had shot to one side, had brought down upon the foremost of them the great steel bars carried in our pincer-like metal hands, and had sent two of them crumpling to the black paving with a thick green liquid oozing from their shattered bodies. The remainder, though, were upon us before we could strike again, and then as they gripped us I could see the Neptunians who had been working in the adjoining compartment come running toward the combat, to assist their fellows. So that though Marlin and I struck out with desperate fury at the monstrous creatures with the great metal jointed arms of our space-walkers, they had in a moment more with their numberless limbs fettered our arms and torn the bars from our grasp, holding us then motionless and helpless.

Thus held, part of the creatures stepped back from us, and then we heard one of them, who bore a single, crimson-circle device upon his metal dress or armor, utter a staccato order to the others. At once four of them drew from their armor the long tubes we had noted there, and trained them upon us. I knew, instinctively, that those tubes held some deadly force like that with which the cylinders had attacked our space-flier in the battle in mid-air. Later I was to learn that the tubes could release a force-ray similar to that used for propulsion by our space-flier and by the cylinders -- a force-ray so concentrated into a pencil-like beam that, instead of merely pressing against whatever it struck, it pierced whatever it touched with terrific force, riving it asunder. Knowing the deadliness of the tubes, I looked for instant annihilation.