silvery moon-lines against the
background of the star-sprinkled sky, was a grim and terrible face.

It was as big and hard as a mountain.

_CHAPTER THIRTEEN_

The ship was silent now. Even the whisper of the cards had stopped. Reg
and Max were on their feet, startled by the cries of Pete and Chizzy.

"It's Manning!" shrieked Pete. "He's watching us!"

Chizzy's hand whipped out like a striking snake toward the controls and,
as he grasped them, his face went deathly white. For the controls were
locked! They resisted all the strength he threw against them and the
ship still bore on toward that mocking face that hung above the Earth.

"Do something!" screamed Max. "You damn fool, do something!"

"I can't," moaned Chizzy. "The ship is out of control."

It seemed impossible. That ship was fast and tricky and it had reserve
power far beyond any possible need. It handled like a dream ... it was
tops in aircraft. But there was no doubt that some force more powerful
than the engines and controls of the ship itself had taken over.

"Manning's got us!" squealed Pete. "We came out to get him and now he
has us instead!"

The craft was gaining speed. The whining shriek of the air against its
plates grew thinner and higher. Listening, one could almost feel and
hear the sucking of the mighty power that pulled it at an ever greater
pace through the tenuous atmosphere.

The face was gone from the sky now. Only the Moon remained, the Moon and
the brush-stroke mountains far below.

Then, suddenly, the speed was slowing and the ship glided downward, down
into the saw-teeth of the mountains.

"We're falling!" yelled Max, and Chizzy growled at him.

But they weren't falling. The ship leveled off and floated, suspended
above a sprawling laboratory upon a mountain top.

"That's Manning's laboratory," whispered Pete in terror-stricken tones.

The levers yielded unexpectedly. Chizzy flung the power control over,
drove the power of the accumulator bank, all the reserve, into the
engines. The ship lurched, but did not move. The engines whined and
screamed in torture. The cabin's interior was filled with a blast of
heat, the choking odor of smoke and hot rubber. The heavy girders of the
frame creaked under the mighty forward thrust of the engines ... but the
ship stood still, frozen above that laboratory in the hills.

Chizzy, hauling back the lever, turned around, pale. His hand began
clawing for his heat gun. Then he sta