nees, bracing himself as
best he could against the terrific forces, Costigan managed finally to
force a hand up to his panel. He was barely in time; for even as he cut
the driving power to its normal value the outer shell of the lifeboat
was blazing at white heat from the friction of the atmosphere through
which it had been tearing with such an insane acceleration!

"Oh, I see--Nerado to the rescue," Costigan commented, after a glance
into the plate. "I hope that those fish blow him clear out of the
Galaxy!"

"Why?" demanded Clio. "I should think that you'd...."

"Think again," he advised her. "The worse Nerado gets licked the better
for us. I don't really expect that, but if they can keep him busy long
enough, we can get far enough away so that he won't bother about us any
more."

As the lifeboat tore upward through the air at the highest permissible
atmospheric velocity Bradley and Clio peered over Costigan's shoulders
into the plate, watching in fascinated interest the scene which was
being kept in focus upon it. The Nevian ship of space was plunging
downward in a long, slanting dive, her terrific beams of force screaming
out ahead of her. The beams of the little lifeboat had boiled the waters
of the ocean; those of the parent craft seemed literally to blast them
out of existence. All about the green submarine there had been volumes
of furiously-boiling water and dense clouds of vapor; now water and fog
alike disappeared, converted into transparent super-heated steam by the
blasts of Nevian energy. Through that tenuous gas the enormous mass of
the submarine fell like a plummet, her defensive screens flaming an
almost invisible violet, her every offensive weapon vomiting forth solid
and vibratory destruction toward the Nevian cruiser so high in the
angry, scarlet heavens.

For miles the submarine dropped, until the frightful pressure of the
depth drove water into Nerado's beam faster than his forces could
volatilize it. Then in that seething funnel there was waged a starkly
fantastic conflict. At its wildly turbulent bottom lay the submarine,
now apparently trying to escape, but held fast by the tractors of the
space-ship; at its top, smothered almost to the point of invisibility by
billowing masses of steam, hung poised the Nevian cruiser.

As the atmosphere had grown thinner and thinner with increasing
altitude Costigan had regulated his velocity accordingly, keeping the
outer shell of the vessel at the highe