ot slay their own friends.

Even so, bullets were rather ineffective against the aero-subs, whose
apparently flimsy, almost transparent outer covering diverted the
bullets with amazing ease.

A whirling maelstrom of ships. The monsters of Moyen had drawn first
blood, if the expression may be used in an action where no blood at all
was drawn, but machines and men simply erased from existence.

Hundreds of planes already gone when the second flight of ships closed
with the aero-subs. Yellow streaks of death flashed from aero-sub
nostrils, but even as aero-sub operators set their rays into motion the
American flyers in head-on charge rolled, dived or zoomed, and kept
their guns going.

High above the first flight of aero-subs, behind which another flight
was winging swiftly into action, American flyers tilted the noses of
their planes over and dived under full power--to sure death by suicide,
though none knew it there at the moment.

* * * * *

These aero-subs could not be driven from the sky by usual means, and
could destroy American ships even before those planes could come to
handgrips; but they, the flyers plainly believed, could be crashed out
of the sky and so, never guessing what besides death in resulting
crashes they faced, the flyers above the aero-subs, even as aero-subs in
rear flashed in to prevent, dived down straight at the backs of the
aero-subs.

In a hundred places the dives of the Americans worked successfully, and
American planes crashed full and true, full power on, into the backs of
the "flying fish." In some aero-subs the container of the Moyen-dealing
agency apparently remained untouched, and airplanes and aero-subs,
welded together, plunged down the invisible skylanes into the sea.

Under water, some of the aero-subs were seen to keep in motion, limping
toward the nearest mother submarines.

"I hope," said Prester Kleig, "the American flyers in such cases are
already dead, for Moyen will be a maniac in his tortures. Munson, do you
hurriedly examine the mother-subs and see if you can locate Moyen."

* * * * *

However, only a scattered aero-sub here and there went down without the
strange substance of the yellow ray being released. In most cases, upon
the contact of plane with aero-sub, the aero-subs and planes were
instantly blotted from view by the yellow, golden flames from the heart
of the winged harbingers of Moyen.

G