plane was marked.

Quickly Arcot tried to maneuver the _Solarite_ over another of the great
ships, for now the danger was only from those he could not see. Suddenly
he had an idea.

"Morey--go back to the power room and change the adjustment on the
meteorite avoider to half a mile!" At once Morey understood his plan,
and hastened to put it into effect.

The illuminated plane was diving, twisting wildly now. The _Solarite_
flashed toward it with sickening speed, then suddenly the gigantic bulk
of the plane loomed off to the right of the tiny ship, the great metal
hull, visible now, rising in awesome might. They were too near; they
shot away to a greater distance--then again that ghostly beam reached
out--and for just a fraction of a second it touched the giant plane.

The titanic engine of destruction seemed suddenly to be in the grip of
some vastly greater Colossus--a clutching hand that closed! The plane
jumped back with an appalling crash, a roar of rending metal. For an
instant there came the sound like a mighty buzz-saw as the giant
propellers of one wing cut into the body of the careening plane. In that
instant, the great power storage tank split open with an impact like the
bursting of a world. The _Solarite_ was hurled back by an explosion that
seemed to rend the very atoms of the air, and all about them was a
torrid blaze of heat and light that seemed to sear their faces and hands
with its intensity.

Then in a time so brief that it seemed never to have happened, it was
gone, and only the distant drone of the other ships' propellers came to
them. There was no luminous spot. The radium paint had been destroyed
in the only possible way--it was volatilized through all the atmosphere!

The Terrestrians had known what to expect; had known what would happen;
and they had not looked at the great ship in that last instant. But the
Kaxorians had naturally been looking at it. They had never seen the sun
directly, and now they had been looking at a radiance almost as
brilliant. They were temporarily blinded; they could only fly a straight
course in response to the quick order of their squadron commander.

And in that brief moment that they were unable to watch him, Arcot
dropped two more bombs in quick succession. Two bright spots formed in
the black night. No longer did these planes feel themselves
invulnerable, able to meet any foe! In an instant they had put on every
last trace of power, and at their top speed t