ply; but it was
his own men upon whom he turned.

"You," he told the pilot--"you were so clever; you would knock this man
senseless! You would insist that you could fly the ship!"

The pilot's eyes still bulged with the fear he had just experienced.
"But, Herr Schwartzmann, it was you who told me--"

A barrage of unintelligible words cut his protest short. Schwartzmann
poured forth imprecations in an unknown tongue, then turned to the
others.

"Back!" he ordered. "Bah!--such men! The danger it iss over--yess! This
pilot, he will take us back safely."

He turned his attention now to the waiting Chet. "Herr Bullard, iss it
not--yess?"

He launched into extended apologies--he had wanted a look at this so
marvelous ship--he had spied upon it; he admitted it. But this murderous
attack was none of his doing; his men had got out of hand; and then he
had thought it best to take Chet, unconscious as he was and return with
him where he could have care.

* * * * *

And Chet Bullard kept his eyes steadily upon the protesting man and said
nothing, but he was thinking of a number of things. There was Walt's
warning, "this Schwartzmann means mischief," and the faked message that
had brought him from the hospital to get the ship from its hiding place;
no, it was too much to believe. But Chet's eyes were unchanging, and he
nodded shortly in agreement as the other concluded.

"You will take us back?" Schwartzmann was asking. "I will repay you well
for what inconvenience we have caused. The ship, you will return it
safely to the place where it was?"

And Chet, after making and discarding a score of plans, knew there was
nothing else he could do. He swung the little metal ball into a
sharply-banked turn. The straight ray of light from an impossibly
brilliant sun struck now on a forward lookout; it shone across the
shoulder of a great globe to make a white, shining crescent as of a
giant moon. It was Earth; and Chet brought the bow-sights to bear on
that far-off target, while again the thunderous blast was built up to
drive them back along the trackless path on which they had come. But he
wondered, as he pressed forward on the control, what the real plan of
this man, Schwartzmann, might be....

* * * * *

Less than half an hour brought them to the Repelling Area, and Chet felt
the upward surge as he approached it. Here, above this magnetic field
where gravitation'