he terrible, prow-like beaks
tearing through the metal of the warships opposing them. They could see,
by the reflection of the light from the many suns, that each monster was
apparently covered by scales and joints of some transparent armor. That
it was real and highly effective armor there could be no doubt, for each
battleship bristled with guns of heavy caliber and each gun was vomiting
forth a continuous stream of fire. Shells bursting against each of the
creatures made one continuous blaze, and the uproar was
indescribable--an uninterrupted cataclysm of sound appalling in its
intensity.

* * * * *

The battle was brief. Soon all four of the battleships had crumpled to
the ground, their crews absorbed by the terrible sucking arms or
devoured by the frightful beaks. They did not die in vain--three of the
monsters had been blown to atoms by shells which had apparently
penetrated their armor. The fourth was pursuing something, which Seaton
now saw was a fleet of small airships, which had flown away from the
scene of conflict. Swift as they were, the monster covered three feet to
their one.

"We can't stand for anything like that," cried Seaton, as he threw on
the power and the Skylark leaped ahead. "Get ready to bump him off,
Mart, when I jerk him away. He acts hard-boiled, so give him a real
one--fifty milligrams!"

Sweeping on with awful speed the monster seized the largest and most
gaily decorated plane in his hundred-foot tentacles just as the Skylark
came within sighting distance. In four practically simultaneous
movements Seaton sighted the attractor at the ugly beak, released all
its power, pointed the main bar of the Skylark directly upward, and
advanced his speed lever. There was a crash of rending metal as the
thing was torn loose from the plane and jerked a hundred miles into the
air, struggling so savagely in that invisible and incomprehensible grip
that the three-thousand-ton mass of the Skylark tossed and pitched like
a child's plaything. Those inside her heard the sharp, spiteful crack of
the machine-gun, and an instant later they heard a report that paralyzed
their senses, even inside the vessel and in the thin air of their
enormous elevation, as the largest X-plosive bullet prepared by the
inventors struck full upon the side of the hideous body. There was no
smoke, no gas or vapor of any kind--only a huge volume of intolerable
flame as the energy stored within the at