m--the deadly
airplane-torpedoes of Osnome. Steered by wireless and carrying no crews,
they were simply winged bombs carrying thousands of pounds of terrific
electrical explosive--enough to kill the men inside the vessel by the
concussion of the explosion, even should the arenak armor be strong
enough to withstand the blow. Though much faster than the Osnomian
vessels, they were slow beside the Skylark, and Seaton could have dodged
a few of them with ease. As he dodged, however, they followed
relentlessly, and in spite of those which were blown up by the gunners,
their number constantly increased until Seaton thought of the repellers.

"'Nobody Holme' is right!" he exclaimed, as he threw on the power
actuating the copper bands which encircled the hull in all directions.
Instantly the torpedoes were hurled backward, exploding as the force
struck them, and even the shells were ineffective, exploding harmlessly,
as they encountered the zone of force. The noise of the awful
detonations lessened markedly.

"Why the silence, I wonder?" asked Seaton, while the futile shells of
the enemy continued to waste their force some hundreds of feet distant
from their goal, and while Crane and DuQuesne were methodically
destroying the huge vessels as fast as they could aim and fire. At every
report one of the monster warships disappeared--its shattered fragments
and the bodies of its crew hurtling to the ground. His voice could not
be heard in even the lessened tumult, but he continued:

"It must be that our repellers have set up a partial vacuum by repelling
even the air!"

* * * * *

Suddenly the shelling ceased and the Skylark was enveloped by a blinding
glare from hundreds of great reflectors; an intense, searching,
bluish-violet light that burned the flesh and seared through eyelids and
eyeballs into the very brain.

"Ultra-violet!" yelled Seaton at the first glimpse of the light, as he
threw on the power. "Shut your eyes! Turn your heads down!"

Out in space, far beyond reach of the deadly rays, the men held a short
conference, then donned heavy leather-and-canvas suits, which they
smeared liberally with thick red paint, and replaced the plain glasses
of their helmets with heavy lenses of deep ruby glass.

"This'll stop any ultra-violet ray ever produced," exulted Seaton, as he
again threw the vessel into the Mardonalian fleet. A score of the great
vessels met their fate before the Skylark wa