limbed into the enclosed passenger pit of the
monoplane--a Mayther--his ears seemed literally to be ringing with the
drumming, mighty voice of Moyen. But now that voice, instead of merely
speaking, rang with sardonic laughter. He had never heard the laughter
of Moyen, but he could guess how it would sound.

That airplane of the slanted wings, the bulbous, almost bulletlike
fuselage, what of it? It was simple, as Kleig looked back at his
memoried glimpse of it. The submarine was a metal fish made with human
hands; the airplane aped the birds. The strange ship which had caused
the destruction of the _Stellar_, was a combination fish and bird--which
merely aped nature a bit further, as anyone who had ever traversed
tropical waters would have instantly recognized.

But what did it portend? What ghastly terrors of Moyen roamed the deeps
of the Atlantic, of the Pacific, the oceans of the world? How close
were some of these to the United States?

The pale eyes of Moyen, he was sure, were already turned toward the
West.

* * * * *

Prester Kleig sighed as he seated himself beside Carlos Kane. Then Kane
pressed one of the myriad of buttons on the dash, and Kleig lifted his
eyes to peer through the skylight, to where that single press of a
button had set in motion the intricate machinery of the helicopter.

A four-bladed fan lifted on a slender pedestal, sufficiently high above
the surface of the wing for the vanes to be free of the central
propeller. Then, automatically, the vanes became invisible, and the
Mayther lifted from the sandy beach as lightly, and far more straightly,
than any bird.

As the ship climbed away for the skies, and through the transparent
floor the beach and the Atlantic fell away below the ship, a sigh of
relief escaped Kleig. This was living! Up here one was free, if only for
a moment, and the swift wind of flight brushed all cobwebs from the
tired human brain. He watched the slender needle of the altimeter, as it
moved around the face of the dial as steadily as the hands of a clock,
around to thirty thousand, thirty-five, forty.

Then Carlos Kane, every movement as effortless as the flight of the
silvery winged Mayther, thrust forth his hand to the dash again, pressed
another button. Instantly the propellers vanished into a blur as the
vanes of the helicopter dropped down the slender staff and the vanes
themselves fitted snugly into their appointed notches atop the