"

"Of course. To save seventy-five million others."

Then suddenly they both stared above.

A roar of sound--of purring motors, of props, mixed with the chatter
of a dozen machine-guns--had belched with numbing suddenness from the
low-hanging clouds.

Enemy planes! A patrol of them!

"God!" jerked Lance. "Ranth's warning got through! Part of it,
anyway!"

He leaped for his plane, shouting: "I'll hold 'em off! You get away
_quick_!" and, through a veritable hail of lead, sprang into the
cockpit.

Then, a cold pang at his heart, he sprang out again.

A bullet had caught Hay!

* * * * *

For a moment, the Slav fire ceased, while their planes zoomed up to
start another death-dealing dive. And in that moment Lance was at
Hay's side, where he had fallen.

"They--got me," whispered Hay, a stream of blood welling from his
gasping mouth. "I'm--I'm going. C-carry me to--to your plane. I've
still a--a little strength left. You take the beacon. I--I'll hold
them--as--as long as--I can. Put through that beacon, boy! _Put it
though!_"

His brain a maelstrom, Lance stared at the crumpled figure. It was the
only way! He heard the motors above come roaring down again;
desperately he carried the blood-choking Hay to his own plane; propped
him limply at the controls. Bullets spat through a frenzy of noise.
Weakly Hay started the Goshawk's Diesels, and weakly, into Lance's
face, smiled, and beckoned him to leave.

And, as Lance, a grim resolve at his heart, turned, Hay's
blood-frothed lips formed the words: "Carry on!"

Through the raining lead, seeming to bear a charmed life, Lance leaped
to Hay's plane, hearing as he did so his own, with a stricken pilot at
its controls, hurtle upwards.

Carry on! For the life of America!

Carry on!

* * * * *

Ten minutes past the hour of nine. A full thousand miles behind the
lines, on the wide black field of America's major war base, a small
group of men stood, surveying the awesome weapons assembled there.

Row upon row of huge, dully-gleaming cigar-shaped things stretched
away into the darkness before them. There were only one or two faint
lights to give illumination, and the night choked in on them, making
them terrifying.

They resembled, more than anything else, half-sized dirigibles, being
roughly about one hundred feet long and perhaps as much as thirty
feet high. At first sight, they seemed to be number