surely; Clio uncertainly
and with many questions, but with undaunted spirit. Finally, having done
all they could do to strengthen their position, they settled down to the
watchful routine of the flight, with every possible instrument set to
detect any sign of the pursuit they so feared.

CHAPTER VII

The Hill

[Illustration:

Its atmosphere was withdrawn, the outer door opened, and he
glanced across a bare hundred feet of space at the
rocket-plane which, keel ports fiercely aflame, was braking
her terrific speed to match the slower pace of the gigantic
ship of war.]

The heavy cruiser _Chicago_ hung motionless in space, thousands of miles
distant from the warring fleets of space-ships so viciously attacking
and so stubbornly defending the planetoid of the enemy. In the captain's
sanctum Lyman Cleveland crouched tensely above his ultra-cameras, his
sensitive fingers touching lightly their micrometric dials. His body was
rigid, his face was set and drawn. Only his eyes moved: flashing back
and forth between the observation plates and smoothly-running rolls
which were feeding into the cameras the hardened steel tapes upon which
were being magnetically recorded the frightful scenes of carnage and
destruction there revealed.

Silent and bitterly absorbed, though surrounded by staring officers,
whose fervent, almost unconscious cursing was prayerful in its
intensity, the visiray expert kept his ultra-instruments upon that awful
struggle to its dire conclusion. Flawlessly those instruments noted
every detail of the destruction of Roger's fleet, of the transformation
of the armada of Triplanetary into an unknown fluid, and finally of the
dissolution of the gigantic planetoid itself. Then furiously Cleveland
drove his beams against the crimsonly opaque obscurity into which the
peculiar, viscous stream of substance was disappearing. Time after time
he applied his every watt of power, with no result. A vast volume of
space, roughly ellipsodial in shape, was closed to him by forces
entirely beyond his experience or comprehension. But suddenly, while his
rays were still trying to pierce that impenetrable murk, it disappeared
instantly and, without warning, the illimitable infinity of space once
more lay revealed upon his plates and his beams flashed on and on
through the void, unimpeded.

"Back to Tellus, sir?" The _Chicago_'s captain broke the strained
silence.

"I wouldn't say so, if I h