with the Washington office of the A. F. F.

"O'Rourke--Mountain Division--Unit Five," he said quietly.
"Approaching Washington at altitude sixty-five thousand. Descending.
Orders, please!"

Within the control room, where the voice of a Washington operator should
have answered on the instant, there was silence. The rocket motor had
been stilled. The two men were suddenly breathless with
listening--listening!--where was heard only the whispering shrillness
from without. The whispering grew as the red ship slanted down into
denser air; it built up in volume; it varied its pitch and timber till
it sounded like echoing voices ... ghostly voices and phantom words ...
like orders from the dead....

And Danny O'Rourke found his eyes staring into those of the Infant,
where he read only the confirmation of his own fears.

It was the Infant who first found words with which to break the
dreadful silence.

"Headquarters is gone," he said in a strange, dry voice, "wiped out!
They must have got it! It looks as if we were on our own.

"Where are you going?" he asked. "It's your ship."

And Danny answered with a single word, though he added other for
emphasis under his breath:

"Down!" he said quietly. "And be damned to them!"

* * * * *

Rolling smoke clouds came to meet them. Danny O'Rourke was watching
his altimeter sharply as he neared the ground. But he glanced more
than once at the smoke. It was shot through with tongues of flame as
they settled down; that was only what might be expected. But Danny was
puzzled by the gray-white whirls that rose through the billowing
smoke, until he knew it for the dust of powdered masonry, and realized
that below him, where great buildings had been, were tumbled ruins.

Beside his control board a radio warning was telling of approaching
ships. Danny cut in on then on emergency wave-length, and found that
two full squadrons of nitro-ships were at hand with others coming.

"Let them tend to it!" the pale-faced youngster beside him choked--one
does not see his country's capital destroyed without a tightening of
the throat. "They can cool it with CO_2 and put down a rescue squad,
though what they can do in that furnace is more than I can see."

Danny nodded mutely; he opened the exhaust to the full, and the
rocket-plane swept out on whirlwinds of raging fire, and smoke, whose
flames reached up even where they flew and licked hungrily at their
ship.

Ja