n island.

* * * * *

It was from here that the black beam started. It spread fanwise across
the sky. But it was not merely blackness. It was utter and
impenetrable darkness, cleaving the sky like a knife. Where it
passed, the rays of the moon were extinguished as fire is extinguished
by water.

A beam of absolute blackness, that pierced the air like a widening
cone, and made the night seem, by contrast, of dazzling brightness
along either dark border.

High into the air that dark beam shot, moving to and fro in the sky.
Dick, darting toward the spot where he hoped to find his invisible
enemy, found himself caught in it.

In utter, inextinguishable darkness! Like a trapped bird he fluttered,
hurling himself this way and that till suddenly he found himself
blinking in the dazzling light of the moon again, and the black beam
was overhead.

Crash! Another widening sphere of ruin as the invisible marauder
dropped a bomb. Dick cursed bitterly. Trapped in that black beam, he
had lost his direction. The invisible plane had shot past the point
where he had hoped to intercept it.

He flung his soaring lever, and hung suspended in the air. An easy
mark for the enemy, if he chose to take the opportunity. No matter.
Death was all that Dick craved. He had seen half his flight wiped out,
and a hundred thousand human beings hurled to destruction. He wanted
to die.

Then suddenly a wild shout came to his ears, as if all Washington had
gone mad with triumph. And Dick heard himself shouting too, before he
knew it, almost before he knew why.

* * * * *

For overhead, where the inky finger searched the sky, a luminous shape
appeared, a silvery cigar, riding in the void. The finger missed it,
and again there was only the moonlight. It caught it again--and again
the whole devastated city rang with yells of derision, hate, and anger
as the black beam held it.

It held it! To and fro that silvery cigar scurried in a frantic
attempt to avoid detection, and remorselessly the black beam held it
down.

It held it down, and it outlined it as clearly as a figure on the
moving picture screen. Then suddenly there came a flash, followed by a
dull detonation, and a black cloud appeared, spreading into a flower
of death near the cigar, and at the edge of the black beam. The cheers
grew frantic. The anti-aircraft battery in the White House grounds had
grasped the situation, an