the Chief; "there
isn't a thing you can do. You try to come down on him, and he'll do as
he did with the cruisers--just slip aside like lightning and nail you
with his damned heat ray when you're below! I'm near Boston now. You
keep away. Where can I meet you? We've got to think--got to do
something!"

* * * * *

And Danny, before he opened the switch that ended their talk, said
meditatively: "Like lightnin' he moves ... but he'll have to move
_faster_ than lightnin' to dodge me. And if you're near Boston, stick
around; I'm comin' now, but not to meet you, Chief; I've got another
important engagement. I'm keepin' it for--for the Infant. And give the
Infant the credit, Chief; give it all to him, he's earned it: he's
paid for it in full." Then the snap of a switch cut off the sound of
Danny's voice before it showed a tell-tale quaver.

It was steady some minutes later, when Danny swept in above the
mounting clouds that he had learned to know. Beneath them invisible
fingers of death were sweeping back and forth where men and women ran
shrieking in terror or waited calmly and dry-eyed for the end. Above
them a slender rounded thing wove its pattern of destruction back and
forth ... back and forth. A spectral ship--a pale phantom, elusive
and dimly seen until it came against the black of rolling smoke from
below.

But to Danny O'Rourke, slanting down from tremendous heights, the
white shape was never lost. On the cross hairs of his directional
sights the ghostly ship hung, and Danny threw his own red rocket like
a living flame over and down where the white one sensed his coming and
waited.

Beside him a human voice, high with horror, called to him. "Come
back!" the Chief of the Mountain Division was commanding. "Danny! For
the love of Heaven, turn back!"

* * * * *

But the voice was unheard by Danny O'Rourke. There was another voice
speaking ... he could almost see the smiling pink and white face of
one beside him who spoke of his "little tin ship" ... spoke, too, of a
white ship that would be like a great thunder-cloud ... and of his own
screaming meteor that was like the earth ... and there was to be a
messenger of death like the hammer of Thor that would flash between
the two....

Danny saw the white one slipping easily aside; the ship was swelling
suddenly before him--it was close ... but the jagged lightning--the
ripping flash of blue that joined