red like leaves in
a gusty wind. The ship itself was racked and shuddering with the
impact of the battering thrust, but it rose like a rocket, though
canted on one wing, and the crashing branches of wind-torn trees
marked its passage on a long, curving slant that bent upward into the
dark. Within the control room Walter Harkness grinned happily as he
drew his bruised body from the place where he had been thrown, and
brought the ship to an even keel.

* * * * *

Nice work! But there was other work ahead, and the smile of
satisfaction soon passed. He held the nose up, and the wireless
warning went out before as the wild climb kept on.

Forty thousand was passed; then fifty and more; a hundred thousand;
and at length he was through the repelling area, that zone of
mysterious force, above which was a magnetic repulsion nearly
neutralizing gravity. He could fly level now; every unit of force
could be used for forward flight to hurl him onward faster and faster
into the night.

Harkness was flying where his license was void; he was flying, too,
where all aircraft were banned. But the rules of the Board of Control
meant nothing to him this night. Nor did the voluble and sulphurous
orders to halt that a patrol-ship flashed north. The patrol-ship was
on station; she was lost far astern before she could gather speed for
pursuit.

Walter Harkness had caught his position upon a small chart. It was a
sphere, and he led a thin wire from the point that was Vienna to a dot
that he marked on the sub-polar waste. He dropped a slender pointer
upon the wire and engaged its grooved tip, and then the flying was out
of his hands. The instrument before him, with its light bulbs and
swift moving discs, would count their speed of passage; it would hold
the ship steadily upon an unerring course and allow for drift of
winds. The great-circle course was simple; the point he marked was
drawing them as if it had been a magnet--drawing them as it drew the
eyes of Walt Harkness, staring strainingly ahead as if to span the
thousands of miles of dark.

CHAPTER III

_The Space Terror_

The control room was glassed in on all sides. The thick triple lenses
were free from clouding, and the glasses between them kept out the
biting cold of the heights. The glass was strong, to hold the pressure
of one atmosphere that was maintained within the ship. The lookouts
gave free vision in all directions except directly belo