ew where to look for it. The men in
that mighty plane could not see it as their machine bore down into the
little cloud of gas.

Tensely the Terrestrians waited. Moments--and the gigantic plane
wobbled! There was a sudden swerve that ended in a nose dive, straight
toward Venus seven miles below.

That the ship should crash into the ground below was not at all Arcot's
plan, and he was greatly relieved when it flattened its dive and started
to climb, its incalculable mass rapidly absorbing its kinetic energy.
Down from its seven mile height it glided, controlling itself perfectly
as Arcot released the last of the first four containers of the liquid
gas makers, putting to sleep the last man on the ship below.

In a long glide that carried it over many miles, the great ship
descended. It had sunk far, and gone smoothly, but now there loomed
ahead of it a range of low hills! It would certainly crash into the
rocky cliffs ahead! Nearer and nearer drew the barrier while Arcot and
the others watched with rigid attention. It might skim above those low
hills at that--just barely escaping.... The watchers cringed as head on,
at nearly two thousand miles an hour, the machine crashed into the
rocks. Arcot had snapped the loud speaker into the circuit once more,
and now as they looked at the sudden crash below, there thundered up to
them mighty waves of sound!

The giant plane had struck about twenty feet from the top of a nearly
perpendicular cliff. The terrific crash was felt by seismographs in
Sonor nearly two thousand miles away! The mighty armored hull plowed
into the rocks like some gigantic meteor, the hundreds of thousands of
tons crushing the rocky precipice, grinding it to powder, and shaking
the entire hill. The cliff seemed to buckle and crack. In moments the
plane had been brought to rest, but it had plowed through twenty feet of
rock for nearly an eighth of a mile. For an instant it hung motionless,
perched perilously in the air, its tail jutting out over the little
valley, then slowly, majestically it sank, to strike with a
reverberating crash that shattered the heavy armor plate!

For another instant the great motors continued turning, the roar of the
propellers like some throbbing background to the rending crashes as the
titanic wreck came to rest. Suddenly, with a series of roaring
explosions, the bank of motors in the left wing blew up with awful
force. There was a flash of indescribable brilliance that moment