he pull of Earth to throw him into
a downward flight that tore even the thin air into screaming
fragments.

* * * * *

One glance through the lookouts behind him showed lashing serpent
forms, translucent as pale fire; impossible beasts from space. His
reason rejected them while his eyes told him the terrible truth.
Despite the speed of his dive, they were gaining on him, coming up
fast; one snout that ended in a cupped depression was plain. A mouth
gaped beneath it; above was a row of discs that were eyes--eyes that
shone more brightly than the luminous body behind--eyes that froze the
mind and muscles of the watching man in utter terror.

He forced himself to look ahead, away from the spectral shapes that
pursued. They were close, yet he thrilled with the realization that he
had helped Chet in some small degree: he had drawn off this group of
attackers.

He felt the upthrust of the R. A. Effect; he felt, too, the pull of a
body that had coiled about his ship. No intangible, vaporous thing,
this. The glass of his control room was obscured by a clinging,
glowing mass while still the little cruiser tore on.

Before his eyes the glowing windows went dark, and he felt the
clutching thing stripped from the hull as the ship shot through the
invisible area of repulsion. A scant hundred yards away a huge
cylinder drove crashingly past. Its metal shone and glittered in the
sun; he knew it for his own ship--his and Chet's. And what was within
it? What of Chet? The loudspeaker was silent.

He eased the thundering craft that bore him into a slow-forming curve
that did not end for fourscore miles before the wild flight was
checked. He swung it back, to guide the ship with shaking hands where
a range of mountains rose in icy blackness, and where a gleaming
cylinder rested upon a bank of snow whose white expanse showed a
figure that came staggering to meet him.

* * * * *

Some experiences and dangers that come to men must be talked over at
once; thrills and excitement and narrow escapes must be told and
compared. And then, at rare times, there are other happenings that
strike too deeply for speech--terrors that rouse emotions beyond mere
words.

It was so with Harkness and Chet. A gripping of hands; a perfunctory,
"Good work, old man!"--and that was all. They housed the two ships,
closing the great doors to keep out the arctic cold; and then Chet
Bullard threw