threw the current
into crashing life.

* * * * *

He felt the smash and jar as the two ships came together. He knew that
the great magnets in their lower hull had gripped the plates on the
top of the other ship. He was certain that the light fans of the
smaller craft must have been crushed; but they had the little red
speedster in an unshakable grip; and they would land it gently. And
then--then he would know!

The dreadful visions in his mind would not down.... Chet's voice
broke in upon him.

"I can't maintain altitude," Chet was saying. "Our vertical blasts
strike upon the other ship; they are almost neutralized." He pointed
to a needle that was moving with slow certainty and deadly persistence
across a graduated dial. It was their low-level altimeter, marking
their fall. Harkness stared at it in stunned understanding.

"We can't hold on," the pilot was saying; "We'll crash sure as fate.
But I'm darned if we'll ever let go!"

Harkness made no reply. He had dashed for an after-compartment to
their storage place of tools, and returned with a blow-torch in his
hand. He lit it and checked its blue flame to a needle of fire.

"Listen, Chet," he said, and the note of command in his voice told who
was in charge, at the final analysis, in this emergency. "I will be
down below. You call out when we are down to twenty thousand: I can
stand the thin air there. I will open the emergency slot in the lower
hull."

"You're going down?" Chet asked. He glanced at the torch and nodded
his understanding. "Going to cut your way through and--"

"I'll get her if she's there to get," Harkness told him grimly. "At
five hundred, if I'm not back, pull the switch."

* * * * *

The pilot's reply came with equal emphasis. "Make it snappy," he said:
"this collision instrument has picked up the signals of five
patrol-ships a hundred miles to the south."

They dropped swiftly to the twenty level, and Harkness heard the
deafening roar of their lower exhausts as he opened the slot in their
ship's hull. He dropped to the red surface held close beneath, while
the cold gripped him and the whirling blasts of air tore at him. But
the torch did its work, and he lowered himself into the cabin of the
little craft that had been the plaything of Mademoiselle Diane.

The cabin was a splintered wreck, where a horrible head had smashed in
search of food. One entrance port was torn open