struggled to arise. Only then did he
see the figure at the controls.

The man was leaning above an instrument board; he straightened to stare
from a rear port while he spoke to someone Chet could not see.

"There's more of 'em coming!" he said in a choked voice. "_Mein Gott!_
Neffer can we get away!"

* * * * *

He fumbled with shaking hands at instruments and controls; and now Chet
saw his chalk-white face and read plainly the terror that was written
there. But the cords that cut into his own wrists and ankles reminded
him that he was bound; he settled back upon the floor. Why struggle? If
this other pilot was having trouble let him get out of it by
himself--let him kill his own snakes!

That the man was having trouble there was no doubt. He looked once more
behind him as if at something that pursued; then swung the ball-control
to throw the ship off her course.

The craft answered sluggishly, and Chet Bullard grinned where he lay
helpless upon the floor; for he knew that his ship should have been
thrown crashingly aside with such a motion as that. The answer was
plain: the flask of super-detonite was exhausted; here was the last
feeble explosion of the final atoms of the terrible explosive that was
being admitted to the generator. And to cut in another flask meant the
opening of a hidden valve.

Chet forgot the pain of his swelling hands to shake with suppressed
mirth. This was going to be good! He forgot it until, through a lookout,
he saw a writhing, circling fire that wrapped itself about the ship and
jarred them to a halt.

The serpents!--those horrors from space that had come with the coming of
the Dark Moon! They had disrupted the high-level traffic of the world;
had seized great, liners; torn their way in; stripped them of every
living thing, and let the empty shells crash back to earth. Chet had
forgotten or he had failed to realize the height at which this new pilot
was flying. Only speed could save them; the monsters, with their snouts
that were great suction-cups, could wrench off a metal door--tear out
the glass from a port!

* * * * *

He saw the luminous mass crush itself against a forward lookout and felt
the jar of its body against their ship. Soft and vaporous, these
cloud-like serpents seemed as they drifted through space; yet the
impact, when they struck, proved that this new matter had mass.

Chet saw the figure at the cont