Atlantic in twenty minutes. You're less than
fifty-eight hundred now. Get your papers."

A Planet liner, east bound, heaves up in a superb spiral and takes the
air of us humming. Her underbody colloid is open and her
transporter-slings hang down like tentacles. We shut off our beam as she
adjusts herself--steering to a hair--over the tramp's conning-tower. The
mate comes up, his arm strapped to his side, and stumbles into the
cradle. A man with a ghastly scarlet head follows, shouting that he must
go back and build up his Ray. The mate assures him that he will find a
nice new Ray all ready in the liner's engine-room. The bandaged head
goes up wagging excitedly. A youth and a woman follow. The liner cheers
hollowly above us, and we see the passengers' faces at the saloon
colloid.

"That's a good girl. What's the fool waiting for now?" says Captain
Purnall.

The skipper comes up, still appealing to us to stand by and see him
fetch St. John's. He dives below and returns--at which we little human
beings in the void cheer louder than ever--with the ship's kitten. Up
fly the liner's hissing slings; her underbody crashes home and she
hurtles away again. The dial shows less than 3,000 feet.

The Mark Boat signals we must attend to the derelict, now whistling her
death song, as she falls beneath us in long sick zigzags.

"Keep our beam on her and send out a General Warning," says Captain
Purnall, following her down.

There is no need. Not a liner in air but knows the meaning of that
vertical beam and gives us and our quarry a wide berth.

"But she'll drown in the water, won't she?" I ask.

"Not always," is his answer. "I've known a derelict up-end and sift her
engines out of herself and flicker round the Lower Lanes for three weeks
on her forward tanks only. We'll run no risks. Pith her, George, and
look sharp. There's weather ahead."

Captain Hodgson opens the underbody colloid, swings the heavy
pithing-iron out of its rack which in liners is generally cased as a
settee, and at two hundred feet releases the catch. We hear the whir of
the crescent-shaped arms opening as they descend. The derelict's
forehead is punched in, starred across, and rent diagonally. She falls
stern first, our beam upon her; slides like a lost soul down that
pitiless ladder of light, and the Atlantic takes her.

[Illustration: "SLIDES LIKE A LOST SOUL DOWN THAT PITILESS LADDER OF
LIGHT, AND THE ATLANTIC TAKES HER"]

"A filthy business," say