own the ages has been that of brave women,
mothers of men.

* * * * *

A period of silence for a time after Prester Kleig's pronouncement.

As he entered the first door leading into the Secret Room, Carlos Kane
met and passed him with a smile.

"You called for winged volunteers, did you not, Kleig?" he asked
quietly.

Kleig nodded. "You are going?" he said.

"Yes. It is my duty."

No other words were necessary, as the men shook hands. Prester Kleig
going on to the Secret Room, Carlos Kane going out to join the mighty
armada which must fight against the minions of Moyen.

The words of Prester Kleig were heard by the pilots of the sky-lanes.
The passenger pits, equipped with self-opening parachutes which dropped
jumpers in series of long falls in order to acquire swift but accurate
and safe landing--they opened at intervals in long falls of two thousand
feet, stayed the fall, then closed again, so that drops were almost
continuous until the last four hundred feet--and pilots, swiftly making
up their minds, dropped their passengers, banked their planes, and raced
into the east.

* * * * *

All over the Americas pilots dropped their passengers and their loads if
their franchises called for the carrying of freight, and banked about to
take part in the first skirmish with the Moyenites.

Dropping figures almost darkened the sky as passengers plunged downward
after the startling signal from Washington. Flowers, which were the
umbrellas of chutes, opened and closed like breathing winged orchids,
letting their burdens safely to earth.

And clouds and fleets of airplanes came in from all directions to land,
in rows and rows which were endless, wing and wing, along the eastern
coast.

Prester Kleig had scarcely entered the Secret Room than the hated voice
of Moyen again broke upon the ears of the machinelike Secret Agents.

"This is madness, gentlemen! My people will annihilate yours!"

But, since time for speech had passed, not one of the Secret Agents made
answer or paid the slightest heed to the warning, though deep in the
heart of each and every one was the belief that Moyen spoke no more than
the truth.

Too, there was a growing respect for the half-god of Asia, in that he
was good enough to warn them of the holocaust which faced their country.

By hundreds and thousands, wing and wing, airplanes dropped to the
Atlantic coast at the closest po