on my craft was
terrific. Its nose caught the rushing tumble of air first, of course,
and my tail sailing in a vacuum, swung around with a sickening wrench.
My swooper might as well have been a barrel in the tumult of waters at
the foot of Niagara. What was worse, the Hans kept me in that condition.
Three of their beams were now playing in my direction, but not directly
on me except for split seconds. Their technique was to play their beams
around me more than on me, jerking them this way and that, so as to form
vacuum pockets into which the air slapped and roared as the beams
shifted, tossing me around like a chip.

Desperately I tried to bring my craft under control, to point its nose
toward the Han ship and discharge an explosive rocket. Bitterly I cursed
my self-confidence, and my impulsive action. An experienced pilot of the
present age would have known better than to be caught shooting straight
down a _dis_ ray beam. He would have kept his ship shooting constantly
at some angle to it, so that his momentum would carry him across it if
he hit it. Too late I realized that there was more to the business of
air fighting, than instinctive skill in guiding a swooper.

At last, when for a fraction of a second my nose pointed toward the
Hans, I pressed the button of my rocket gun. I registered a hit, but not
an accurate one. My projectile grazed an upper section of the ship's
hull. At that it did terrific damage. The explosion battered in a
section about fifty feet in diameter, partially destroying the top deck.

At the same instant I had shot my rocket, I had, in a desperate attempt
to escape that turmoil of tumbling air, released a catch and dropped all
that it was possible to drop of my ultron ballast. My swooper shot
upward, like a bubble streaking for the surface of water.

I was free of the trap in which I had been caught, but unable to take
advantage of the confusion which reigned on the Han ship.

I was as helpless to maneuver my ship now, in its up-rush, as when I had
been tumbling in the air pockets. Moreover I was badly battered from
plunging around in my shell like a pellet in a box, and partially
unconscious.

I was miles in the air when I recovered myself. The swooper was steady
enough now, but still rising, my instruments told me, and traveling in a
general westward direction at full speed. Far below me was a sea of
clouds, stretching from horizon to horizon, and through occasional
breaks in its surfa