t's my engineer. He's gone crazy."

"Shunt the lift out of him with a spanner. Hurry!"

"But I can make St. John's if you'll stand by."

"You'll make the deep, wet 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 land 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 pretty 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 3000 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
smoking-room 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 la