slowly downward.

Up above the anti-aircraft, midges were dancing in the sun--fighter
planes. They dived downward.

Abruptly a bomber fell out of formation, tried to right itself, failed.
A wing came off. Crazily the bomber began spinning.

Black smoke gouted from a third ship. It began losing altitude rapidly.

The others continued on their course.

Michaelson suddenly appeared on the bridge.

How he got there, Craig did not know, but he was there, jumping around
and waving his notebook in the air. Michaelson was shouting at the top
of his voice.

"--Danger!--Must get away from here--"

Craig caught the shouted words. The thundering roar of the anti-aircraft
barrage drowned out the rest.

No one paid any attention to Michaelson. They were watching the sky.

The planes had released their bombs.

For some reason they were not attacking their normal target, the
carrier. Perhaps a second flight was making a run over the carrier. The
first flight was bombing the battleship.

The Idaho was their target.

* * * * *

Craig could feel the great ship tremble as she tried to swerve to avoid
the bombs. A destroyer would have been able to spin in a circle but
35,000 tons of steel do not turn so easily.

The bombs were coming down. Craig could see them in the air, little
black dots growing constantly larger. Fighter planes were tearing great
holes in the formation of the bombers. Few of the Jap ships would ever
return to their base. But their job was already done.

The bombs hit.

They struck in an irregular pattern all around the ship. Four or five
were very near misses but there was not one direct hit. Great
waterspouts leaped from the surface of the sea. A sheet of flame seemed
to run around the horizon. It was a queer, dancing, intensely brilliant,
blue flame. It looked like the discharge from some huge electric arc.

Even above the roar of the barrage, Craig heard the tearing sound.
Somehow it reminded him of somebody tearing a piece of cloth. Only, to
make a sound as loud as this, it would have to be a huge piece of cloth
and the person tearing it would have to be a giant.

The blue light became more intense. It flared to a brilliance that was
intolerable.

At the same time, the sun jumped!

"I'm going nuts!" the fleeting thought was in Craig's mind. He wondered
if a bomb had struck the ship. Was this the nightmare that comes with
death? Had he died in the split fractio