k under him.

"We're off!" cried Burke. "Watch out!"

The floor swayed as the Ring, lifted by the tractor, swung to and fro
like a pendulum. Bennie threw himself upon his stomach. The earth was
dropping away from them like a stone. He felt a sickening sensation.

"Two thousand feet already," gasped Burke. "The atmospheric valve is set
for five thousand. I'll make it ten! It will give us more room to
recover in--if anything--goes wrong!"

He gave the knob another half turn and laid his hand lightly on the
lever which controlled the movements of the tractor. Bennie, flattened
against the window, gazed below. The great dust ring showed indistinctly
through a blue haze no longer directly beneath them, but a quarter of a
mile to the north. Evidently they were not rising vertically.

The valley of the Ring looked like a black crack in a greenish-gray
desert of rock and moss, the landing stage like a tiny bird's nest. The
floor of the car moved slightly from side to side. Burke's face had gone
gray, and he crouched unsteadily, one hand gripping a steel bracket on
the wall.

"My Lord!" he mumbled with dry lips. "My Lord!"

Bennie, momentarily expecting annihilation, crawled on all fours to
Burke's side.

The needle of the manometer indicated nine thousand five hundred feet,
and was rapidly nearing the next division. Suddenly Burke felt the lever
move slowly under his hand as though operated by some outside
intelligence, and at the same moment the axis of one gyroscope swung
slowly in a horizontal plane through an angle of nearly ninety degrees,
while that of the other dipped slightly from the vertical. Both men had
a ghastly feeling that the ghost of Pax had somehow returned and assumed
control of the car. Bennie rotated the map under the gyroscope until the
fine black line on the dial again lay across their destination. Then he
crept back to his window again. The earth, far below and dimly visible,
was sliding slowly northward, and the dust ring which marked their
starting-point now lay as a flattened ellipse on the distant horizon.
Beneath and behind them in their flight trailed a thin streak of pale
bluish fog--the wake of the Flying Ring.

They were now searing the atmosphere at a height of nearly two miles,
and the car was flying on a firm and even keel. There was no sound save
the dull roar of the tractor and a slight humming from the vibration of
the light steel cables. Bennie no longer felt any disagreeable
s