re a hold. If the air-pressure within the ship were released; if
even a crack were opened!--

"Here, you!" he shouted to the frantic Schwartzmann who was jerking
frenziedly at the controls that no longer gave response. "Cut these
ropes!--leave those instruments alone, you fool!" He was suddenly
vibrant with hate as he realized what this man had done: he had struck
him, Chet, down as he would have felled an animal for butchery; he had
stolen their ship; and now he was losing it. Chet hardly thought of
his own desperate plight in his rage at this threat to their ship, and
at Schwartzmann's inability to help himself.

"Cut these ropes!" he repeated. "Damn it all, turn me loose; I can fly
us out!" He added his frank opinion of Schwartzmann and all his men.
And Schwartzmann, though his dark face flushed angrily red for one
instant, leaped to Chet's side and slashed at the cords with a knife.

The room swam before Chet's dizzy eyes as he came to his feet. He half
fell, half drew himself full length toward the valve that he alone
knew. Then again he was on his feet and he gripped at the ball-control
with one hand while he opened a master throttle that cut in this new
supply of explosive.

* * * * *

The room had been silent with the silence of empty space, save only
for the scraping of a horrid body across the ship's outer shell. The
silence was shattered now as if by the thunder of many guns. There
was no time for easing themselves into gradual flight. Chet thrust
forward on the ball-control, and the blast from their stern threw the
ship as if it had been fired from a giant cannon.

The self-compensating floor swung back and up; Chet's weight was
almost unbearable as the ship beneath him leaped out and on, and the
terrific blast that screamed and thundered urged this speeding shell
to greater and still greater speed. And then, with the facility that
that speed gave, Chet's careful hands moved a tiny metal ball within
its magnetic cage, and the great ship bellowed from many ports as it
followed the motion of that ball.

Could an eye have seen the wild, twisting flight, it must have seemed
as if pilot and ship had gone suddenly mad. The craft corkscrewed and
whirled; it leaped upward and aside; and, as the glowing mass was
thrown clear of the lookout, Chet's hand moved again to that maximum
forward position, and again the titanic blast from astern drove them
on and out.

There were other