be so fearful? All they have to do is
move a half mile in any direction and they'll never find them."

"But to move will interfere with their plans," said Eyer. "Lucian, look
at the expressions on their faces! Something tells me they are
vulnerable in ways we haven't guessed at. If we knew the secret maybe we
could destroy them. We've got to discover their weak spot."

* * * * *

There was a long pause while Jeter and Eyer watched the rescue ships
come climbing up the endless stairways of the sky. Then Jeter whispered
again, guardedly as usual.

"There seems to be nothing we can do. If our friends are able, by some
miracle, to do something, you know what that means to us?"

"It means we're as good as dead no matter what happens," replied Eyer.
"But we're only two--and there must be a million buried under the debris
in New York City alone. If we can do anything at all...."

There he left it. The partners looked at each other. Each read the right
answer in the other's eyes. When the showdown came they'd die as
cheerfully as they knew how, hoping to the last to do something for the
people who must still hope that, somehow, they would cause this bitter
cup of catastrophe to pass from them. And there were thousands upon
thousands whose blood cried out for vengeance.

The hours sped as the six planes fled upward. To the ears of the
partners, through the audiphones, came the stern roaring of their
motors. In their eyes they bulked larger and larger as the time fled
away.

The sand in the hour glass was running out. When it was all gone, and
the time had come, what could the helpless Jeter and Eyer hope to
accomplish?

For an hour they studied the concerned faces of Sitsumi and the Three.

They were fearful of something.

What?

CHAPTER XI

_To the Rescue_

"Why should we run?" the voice of Sitsumi suddenly rang out in the
control room. "Must we admit in the very beginning of our revolution
that we are vulnerable? Must we confess the fears to which all humanity
is heir? We had not thought ourselves liable to attack, but there still
is a way to destroy these upstarts. To your places, everyone! We shall
fight these winged upstarts and destroy them!"

The denizens of the space ship were at their stations. Jeter and Eyer
could imagine the minions of Sitsumi and the Three, below the floor of
the white globe, standing-to on platforms about the unseen engines which
gave life a