eed at once to
New York. Radiobeacon 2X12 will guide you down. Your message received
and we acknowledge report of the finding of the space-flyer, Pilot
Haldgren. Do not discharge any passengers and land nowhere else than at
New York without direct orders of the Board. Keep your directional
signal on full power; our cruisers will pick you up in the highest
level. Signed: Commander of Air."

Spud O'Malley, it was, who broke the silence of the room where only the
sound of the terrific exhaust came thinly through.

"May divils confound him! And it's back on the Moon with those other
beasts I'm wishin' I was. At least a man can get close enough to slam
them in their ugly faces; but the Commander and his cruisers! Sure,
there's nothin' we can do!"

"Just take our medicine," said Chet Bullard quietly. "But I have proved
him wrong; Haldgren, here, is the living evidence of that. And I said I
would laugh him from the Service--well, I'm not so sure of that."

"But surely," broke in Haldgren's booming voice, "there will be only
praise for what you have done. I do not understand--"

"You don't know the Commander, my boy," Spud broke in dryly. "And you
don't know that the lad, here, defied him to his face and ran the
gantlet of his cruisers' guns to get away and go after you."

"Ah!" grunted the giant. "And now I understand. It is the old story--an
incompetent man in a place of authority--"

* * * * *

Chet broke in.

"Not quite right; this Commander of ours has done much--he is a driver
of men--but there are some of us who think he lacks vision. He can never
see beyond the stratosphere he rules so ably; and his position is
supreme."

"There is still the Governing Council--we will appeal--"

But the master pilot was not listening to Haldgren's words; his slim,
sensitive hand was reaching for the ball-control to build up still more
the tremendous blast of a forward exhaust that was checking their speed
and making them as heavy as if their bodies were of meteoric iron.

A forward lookout showed a black globe; its circle was rimmed with fire
from the Sun that it blotted out. A hemisphere of night lay below--the
black, mysterious night of a waiting Earth. But one strong signal came
in on the instruments at Chet's side to show him where on that horizon
was New York; and the call of a flagship of cruisers was flashing before
him as the lift of the Repelling Area was felt.

"Follow!" flashed t